The Shadows on the Wall

'Henry had words with Edward in the study the night before Edward died,'
said Caroline Glynn.

She was elderly, tall, and harshly thin, with a hard colourlessness of
face. She spoke not with acrimony, but with grave severity. Rebecca Ann
Glynn, younger, stouter, and rosy of face between her crinkling puffs of
grey hair, gasped, by way of assent. She sat in a wide flounce of black
silk in the corner of the sofa, and rolled terrified eves from her sister
Caroline to her sister Mrs Stephen Brigham, who had been Emma Glynn, the
one beauty of the family. She was beautiful still, with a large,
splendid, full-blown beauty; she filled a great rocking-chair with her
superb bulk of femininity, and swayed gently back and forth, her black
silks whispering and her black frills fluttering. Even the shock of death
(for her brother Edward lay dead in the house), could not disturb her
outward serenity of demeanour. She was grieved over the loss of her
brother: he had been the youngest, and she had been fond of him, but
never had Emma Brigham lost sight of her own importance amidst the waters
of tribulation. She was always awake to the consciousness of her own
stability in the midst of vicissitudes and the splendour of her permanent
bearing.

But even her expression of masterly placidity changed before her sister
Caroline's announcement and her sister Rebecca Ann's gasp of terror and
distress in response.

'I think Henry might have controlled his temper, when poor Edward was so
near his end,' said she with an asperity which disturbed slightly the
roseate curves of her beautiful mouth.

'Of course he did not _know_,' murmured Rebecca Ann in a faint tone
strangely out of keeping with her appearance.

One involuntarily looked again to be sure that such a feeble pipe came
from that full-swelling chest.

'Of course he did not know it,' said Caroline quickly. She turned on her
sister with a strange sharp look of suspicion. 'How could he have known
it?' said she. Then she shrank as if from the other's possible answer.
'Of course you and I both know he could not,' saad she conclusively, but
her pale face was paler than it had been before.

Rebecca gasped again. Be married sister, Mrs Emma Brigham, was now
sitting up straight in her chair; she had ceased rocking, and was eyeing
them both intently with a sudden accentuation of family likeness in her
face. Given one common intensity of emotion and similar lines showed
forth, and the three sisters of one race were evident.

'What do you mean?' said she impartially to them both. Then she, too,
seemed to shrink before a possible answer. She even laughed an evasive
sort of laugh. 'I guess you don't mean anything,' said she, but her face
wore still the expression of shrinking horror.

'Nobody means anything,' said Caroline firmly. She rose and crossed the
room toward the door with grim decisiveness. 'Where are you going?' asked
Mrs Brigham.

I have something to see to,' replied Caroline, and the others at once
knew by her tone that she had some solemn and sad duty to perform in the
chamber of death.

'Oh,' said Mrs Brigham.

After the door had closed behind Caroline, she turned to Rebecca.

'Did Henry have many words with him?' she asked.