, who were
morbidly curious and revelled in the sickly excitement of thinking
they might be living in the house of a poisoner. Lucinda Hart sent in
her resignation from the church choir. Her experience, the first time
she had sung after Eliza Farrel's death, did not exactly daunt her;
she was not easily daunted. But she had raised her husky contralto,
and lifted her elderly head in its flowered bonnet before that
watchful audience of old friends and neighbors, and had gone home and
written her stiffly worded note of resignation.

She attended church the following Sunday. She said to herself that
her absence might lead people to think there was some ground for the
awful charge which had been brought against her. She bought a smart
new bonnet and sat among the audience, and heard Lucy Ayres, who had
a beautiful contralto, sing in her place. Lucy sang well, and looked
very pretty in her lace blouse and white hat, but she was so pale
that people commented on it. Sylvia, who showed a fairly antagonistic
partisanship for Lucinda, spoke to her as she came out of church, and
walked with her until their roads divided. Sylvia left Henry to
follow with Rose Fletcher, who was still staying in East Westland,
and pressed close to Lucinda.

"How are you?" she said.

"Well enough; why shouldn't I be?" retorted Lucinda.

It was impossible to tell from her manner whether she was grateful
for, or resented, friendly advances. She held her head very high.
There was a stiff, jetted ornament on her new bonnet, and it stood up
like a crest. She shot a suspicious glance at Sylvia. Lucinda in
those days entertained that suspicion of suspicion which poisons the
very soul.

"I don't know why you shouldn't be," replied Sylvia. She herself cast
an angry glance at the people around them, and that angry glance was
like honey to Lucinda. "You were a fool to give up your place in the
choir," said Sylvia, still with that angry, wandering gaze. "I'd
sung. I'd shown 'em; and I'd sung out of tune if I'd wanted to."

"You don't know what it was like last Sunday," said Lucinda then. She
did not speak complainingly or piteously. There was proud strength in
her voice, but it was emphatic.

"I guess I do know," said Sylvia. "I saw everybody craning their
necks, and all them strangers. You've got a lot of strangers at the
hotel, haven't you, Lucinda?"

"Yes," said Lucinda, and there was an echo in her monosyllable like
an expletive.

Sylvia nodded sy