her worsteds again and finished the muffler she had been crocheting. If
she wept it was in secret, when the lights were out.

Some years later the house was sold over her head, but when she stood,
penniless, upon the threshold it was to cross it as haughtily as she had
done as a bride. The stiff folds of her black silk showed no wavering
ripple, the repose of her lips betrayed no tremor. The smooth, high
pompadour of her black hair passed as proudly beneath the arched doorway
as it had done in the days of her wifehood and Julius Webb.

Her neighbours opened their wasted stores to her need, and out of their
poverty offered her abundance, but she put aside their proffered
assistance and undertook, unaided, the support and education of her
child, maintaining throughout the struggle her air of unflinching irony.
She moved into a small white frame house opposite the church, and let
out her spare rooms to student boarders. Her pride was never lowered and
her crêpe was never laid aside. She sat up far into the night to darn
the sleeves of her black silk gown, but the stitches were of such
exquisite fineness that in the dim light of her drawing-room they seemed
but an added gloss.

From behind the massive coffee urn at the head of her table she regarded
her boarders as so many beneficiaries upon her bounty. When she passed a
cup of coffee she seemed to confer an honour; when she returned a
receipted bill it was as if she repulsed an insult. People said that she
had been born to greatness and that she had never adapted herself to the
obscurity that had been thrust upon her--but they said it when her back
was turned. To her face the subject was never broached, and her former
prosperity was ignored along with her present poverty. Of her own
sorrows she, herself, made no mention. When she spoke from the depths of