No woman can
teach school for forty years with absolute impunity. She was more
credulous as to her own possible failings than she had ever been in
her whole life. She was cold with horror and terror, and yet not
so much horror and terror of the supernatural as of her own self.
The weakness of belief in the supernatural was nearly impossible
for this strong nature. She could more easily believe in her own
failing powers.
"I don't know but I'm going to be like Aunt Marcia," she said to
herself, and her fat face took on a long rigidity of fear.
She started toward the mirror to unfasten her dress, then she
remembered the strange circumstance of the brooch and stopped
short. Then she straightened herself defiantly and marched up to
the bureau and looked in the glass. She saw reflected therein,
fastening the lace at her throat, the old-fashioned thing of a
large oval, a knot of fair and black hair under glass, set in a rim
of twisted gold. She unfastened it with trembling fingers and
looked at it. It was her own brooch, the cluster of pearl grapes
on black onyx. Louisa Stark placed the trinket in its little box
on the nest of pink cotton and put it away in the bureau drawer.
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