disappearing? Was she to lose that as
well, and at her age? A deep sigh full of the most grievous impotence
filled the lonely room.

Mr. Tiralla was whistling in the yard. Rosa and he were feeding the
poultry, and the birds were pecking and scraping and cackling and
quarrelling, as they greedily looked for the yellow corn that had been
scattered to them.

The woman stared at the two from her window with burning eyes. There
they stood, Mr. Tiralla so broad and beaming. He had grown quite
cheerful lately, for the day after to-morrow, perhaps even to-morrow,
Mikolai was coming. Everybody in the house was delighted except her.
When Mikolai was there, there would never be another chance.

That was Mrs. Tiralla's fixed idea. In a transport of despair and
fervour, hatred and devotion, all strangely mingled, she flung herself
on her knees before the picture where she had prayed for so many years,
and which reminded her so strongly of her best and only friend's
delicate, beautiful face. "Help, help!" After praying and weeping for a
long time, weeping so bitterly and so copiously that her face and hands
and even her bosom were quite wet with tears, she rose. She had made up
her mind. Mikolai was coming to-morrow, therefore quick, at the
eleventh hour.

She went to the lumber-room and fetched the poison. [Pg 165] The yellow
grains looked exactly like those her husband had just been scattering.
She would throw some of them to the poultry that very evening when they
were hungry. And if they died--what a pity it would be about them--then
Mr. Tiralla should get some of the powder in his wine or coffee.

Rosa had gone to the Przykop with Marianna to fetch some branches and
moss. She had made up her mind to place a wreath over the front door in
honour of her brother's return; he should see at once how happy she was
that he was coming back to her. And the stranger's first impression of
the old house, with its dark, yawning passage, would thus be made a
pleasant one also. Rosa had never had any fault to find with her home;
still, she felt in a dull kind of way that Marianna was right when she
used to say, "Ugh! how uncomfortable this place is!"

So the two gathered some of the green, damp moss, with small, delicate,
feathery leaves on short stalks, that covered the ground in the morass
like a carpet. Rosa was going to wind it round a rope; she had made
many wreaths like that for the Holy Virgin's altar at Starawie['s] and
for the