“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.  Only death could disturb her habit of order.

Her fingers were so cold they felt fairly numb as she unfastened her dress; she staggered when she slipped it over her head.  She went to the closet to hang it up and recoiled.  A strong smell of lovage came in her nostrils; a purple gown near the door swung softly against her face as if impelled by some wind from within.  All the pegs were filled with garments not her own, mostly of somber black, but there were some strange-patterned silk things and satins.

Suddenly Louisa Stark recovered her nerve.  This, she told herself, was something distinctly tangible.  Somebody had been taking liberties with her wardrobe.  Somebody had been hanging some one else’s clothes in her closet.  She hastily slipped on her dress again and marched straight down to the parlour.  The people were seated there; the widow and the minister were playing backgammon.  The librarian was watching them.  Miss Amanda Gill was mending beside the large lamp on the centre table.  They all looked up with amazement as Louisa Stark entered.  There was something strange in her expression.  She noticed none of them except Amanda.

“Where is your sister?” she asked peremptorily of her.

“She’s in the kitchen mixing up bread,” Amanda quavered; “is there anything—­” But the school-teacher was gone.

She found Sophia Gill standing by the kitchen table kneading dough with dignity.  The young girl Flora was bringing some flour from the pantry.  She stopped and stared at Miss Stark, and her pretty, delicate young face took on an expression of alarm.

Miss Stark opened at once upon the subject in her mind.

“Miss Gill,” said she, with her utmost school-teacher manner, “I wish to inquire why you have had my own clothes removed from the closet in my room and others substituted?”

Sophia Gill stood with her hands fast in the dough, regarding her.  Her own face paled slowly and reluctantly, her mouth stiffened.

“What?  I don’t quite understand what you mean, Miss Stark,” said she.

“My clothes are not in the closet in my room and it is full of things which do not belong to me,” said Louisa Stark.