There was a red spot on each of her thin, withered cheeks.

He heard her footstep mounting her bedroom staircase, but no clue to the mystery of her purchase offered itself to mitigate his surprise.

Had she not been his housekeeper now for six years, and during that time not so much as a trace of any vagary of mind had he observed in her.
About an hour afterwards, when he had gone into the next room to look for some papers, he heard quiet sounds going on in the kitchen, which was just at the rear end of the small hall on which the room doors opened.

A moment more and he surmised that his housekeeper must have again descended for something.

"Are you there, Mrs.Martha ?" he called.
There was no answer in words, but hearing the kitchen door open, he looked into the lobby, and there a strange vision flashed on his sight.
His end of the lobby was dark, but in the kitchen doorway, by the light of the candles she held, he saw his elderly housekeeper arrayed in the pure white gown.
He paused in sheer astonishment, looking at her, and he observed she trembled--trembled all over with the meek courage it cost her to thus exhibit herself; for she appeared to have opened the door for no other purpose than to let him see her.