Ann crossed her tiny hands, wrinkled over with the black silk, with long, empty black silk fingers dangling in her lap, over a fine white linen handkerchief.

She had laid her gloved hands over the handkerchief with a gesture full of resolution.

"I sha'n't give way," she said to Paulina Maria.

That meant that, although she took the handkerchief in obedience to custom, it would not be used to dry the tears of affliction.
Ann's face, through the black gloom of her crape veil, revealed only the hard lines of resolution about her mouth and the red stain of tears about her eyes.

She held now her emotions in check like a vise.
Jerome and poor little Elmira, whom Paulina Maria had dressed in a little black Canton-crape shawl of her own, sat on either side.
Elmira wept now and then, trying to stifle her sobs, but Jerome sat as immovable as his mother.
The funeral guests arrived, and seated themselves solemnly in the rows of chairs which had been borrowed from the neighbors.