Mrs. Field returned to the kitchen.  Lois sat beside the window, her head leaning against the sash, looking out.  Her mother took some biscuits out of the stove oven and set them on the table with the coffee.  “Breakfast is ready,” said she.

She sat down at the table.  Lois never stirred.

“You needn’t worry,” said Mrs. Field, in a sarcastic voice; “everything on this table is bought with your own money.  I went out last night and got some flour.  There’s a whole barrelful in the buttery, but I didn’t touch it.”

Lois drew her chair up to the table, and ate a biscuit and drank a cup of coffee without saying a word.  Her eyes were set straight ahead; all her pale features seemed to point out sharply; her whole face had the look of a wedge that could pierce fate.  After breakfast she went out of the room, and returned shortly with her hat on.

“Mother,” said she.

“What is it?”

“You’d better know what I’m going to do.”

“What are you goin’ to do?”

“I’m goin’ down to that lawyer’s office, and—­tell him.”  Lois turned toward the door.

“I s’pose you know all you’re goin’ to do,” said her mother, in a hard voice.

“I’m going to tell the truth,” returned Lois, fiercely.

“You’re goin’ to put your mother in State’s prison.”

Lois stopped.  “Mother, you can’t make me believe that.”

“It’s true, whether you believe it or not.  I don’t know anything about law, but I’m sure enough of that.”

Lois stood looking at her mother.  “Then I’ll put you there,” said she, in a cruel voice.  “That’s where you ought to go, mother.”

She went out of the room, and shut the door hard behind her; then she kept on through the house to the front porch, and sat down.  She sat there all the morning, huddled up against a pillar.  Her mother worked about the house; Lois could hear her now and then, and every time she shuddered.  She had a feeling that the woman in the house was not her mother.  Had she been familiar with the vampire superstition, she might have thought of that, and had a fancy that some fiend animated the sober, rigid body of the old New England woman with evil and abnormal life.

At noon Lois went in and ate some dinner mechanically; then she returned.  Presently, as she sat there, a bell began tolling, and a funeral procession passed along the road below.  Lois watched it listlessly—­the black-draped hearse, the slow-marching bearers, the close-covered wagons, and the nodding horses.  She could see it plainly through the thin spring branches.  It was quite a long procession; she watched it until it passed.  The cemetery was only a little way below the house, on the same side of the street.  By twisting her head a little, she could have seen the black throng at the gate.

After a while the hearse and the carriages went past on their homeward road at a lively pace, the gate clicked, and Mrs. Jane Maxwell and a young man came up the walk.