Then the music stopped, the policeman passed, and Gabriella and the wind were alone in the street.

Overhead the stars shone dimly through a web of mist; and it seemed to her that the sadness of the sky and the sadness of the earth had mingled there in the long straight street where the wind blew with a melancholy sound between rows of silent and darkened houses.
A noise in the hall made her turn, and, looking up, she saw the gaunt figure of Miss Amelia Peterborough standing in the bend of the staircase.

In her hand the old maid held a twisted candlestick of greenish brass, and the yellow flame of the candle cast a trembling, fantastic shadow on the wall at her back.

Her head, shorn of the false "front" she wore in the day, appeared to have become all forehead and beaked nose; her eyes had dwindled to mere points of blackness; her mouth, sunken and drawn over toothless gums, was like the mouth of a witch.

The wind, blowing in gusts through the open door, inflated her gray shawl and the skirt of her dressing-gown, while, with each flutter of her garments, the grotesque shadow on the white wall danced and gibbered behind her.