She was elderly, tall, and harshly thin, with a hard colourlessness
of face. She spoke not with acrimony, but with grave severity.
Rebecca Ann Glynn, younger, stouter and rosy of face between her
crinkling puffs of gray hair, gasped, by way of assent. She sat in
a wide flounce of black silk in the corner of the sofa, and rolled
terrified eyes from her sister Caroline to her sister Mrs. Stephen
Brigham, who had been Emma Glynn, the one beauty of the family. She
was beautiful still, with a large, splendid, full-blown beauty; she
filled a great rocking-chair with her superb bulk of femininity,
and swayed gently back and forth, her black silks whispering and
her black frills fluttering. Even the shock of death (for her
brother Edward lay dead in the house,) could not disturb her
outward serenity of demeanor. She was grieved over the loss of her
brother: he had been the youngest, and she had been fond of him,
but never had Emma Brigham lost sight of her own importance amidst
the waters of tribulation. She was always awake to the
consciousness of her own stability in the midst of vicissitudes and
the splendor of her permanent bearing.

But even her expression of masterly placidity changed before her
sister Caroline's announcement and her sister Rebecca Ann's gasp of
terror and distress in response.

"I think Henry might have controlled his temper, when poor Edward
was so near his end," said she with an asperity which disturbed
slightly the roseate curves of her beautiful mouth.

"Of course he did not KNOW," murmured Rebecca Ann in a faint tone
strangely out of keeping with her appearance.