A boy appeared at the end of the walk.  His arms were full of newspapers, and he rolled one with expert haste.  Miss Williams could contain, herself no further.  She ran down the walk.  The boy gave the paper a sudden twist and threw it to her.  She caught it and ran up-stairs to her room and locked the door.  For a moment she turned faint.  Then she shook the paper violently apart.  She had not far to search.  The will of so important a personage as Miss Webster was necessarily on the first page.  The “story” occupied a column, and the contents were set forth in the head-lines.  The head-lines read as follows: 

WILL OF MISS MARIAN WEBSTER
——­
SHE LEAVES HER VAST FORTUNE TO
CHARITY
——­
FOUR MILLIONS THE PRICE OF ETERNAL
FAME
——­
NO LEGACIES

The room whirled round the forgotten woman.  She turned sick, then cold to her marrow.  She fell limply to the floor, and crouched there with the newspaper in her hand.  After a time she spread it out on the floor and spelled through the dancing characters in the long column.  Her name was not mentioned.  Those thirty years had outweighed the devotion of more than half a lifetime.  It was the old woman’s only revenge, and she had taken it.

No tears came to Miss Williams’s relief.  She gasped occasionally.  “How could she? how could she? how could she?” her mind reiterated.  “What difference would it have made to her after she was dead?  And I—­oh God—­what will become of me?” For a time she did not think of Strowbridge.  When she did, it was to see him smiling into the eyes of Elinor Holt.  Her delusion fell from her in that hour of terrible realities.  Had she read of his engagement in the newspaper before her she would have felt no surprise.  She knew now what had brought him back to California.  Many trifles that she had not noted at the time linked themselves symmetrically together, and the chain bound the two young people.

“Fool! fool!” she exclaimed.  “But no—­thank heaven, I had that one little dream!—­the only one in forty-three years!”

The maid tapped at her door and announced dinner.  She bade her go away.  She remained on the floor, in the dark, for many hours.  The stars were bright, but the wind lashed the lake, whipped the trees against the roof.  When the night was half done she staggered to her feet.  Her limbs were cramped and numbed.  She opened the door and listened.  The lights were out, the house was still.  She limped over to the room which had been Miss Webster’s.  That too was dark.  She lighted the lamps and flooded the room with soft pink light.  She let down her hair, and with the old lady’s long scissors cut a thick fringe.  The hair fell softly, but the parting of years was obtrusive.  A bottle of gum tragacanth stood on one corner of the dressing-table, and with its contents Abby matted the unneighborly locks together.  The fringe covered her careworn brow, but her face was pallid, faded.  She knew where Miss Webster had kept her cosmetics.  A moment later an array of bottles, jars, and rouge-pots stood on the table before her.