bashfully. "She's Cousin Olaf's wife."


III

Mrs. Olaf Ericson--Clara Vavrika, as many people still called
her--was moving restlessly about her big bare house that morning.
Her husband had left for the county town before his wife was out of
bed--her lateness in rising was one of the many things the Ericson
family had against her. Clara seldom came downstairs before eight
o'clock, and this morning she was even later, for she had dressed
with unusual care. She put on, however, only a tightfitting black
dress, which people thereabouts thought very plain. She was a
tall, dark woman of thirty, with a rather sallow complexion and a
touch of dull salmon red in her cheeks, where the blood seemed to
burn under her brown skin. Her hair, parted evenly above her low
forehead, was so black that there were distinctly blue lights in
it. Her black eyebrows were delicate half-moons and her lashes
were long and heavy. Her eyes slanted a little, as if she had a
strain of Tartar or gypsy blood, and were sometimes full of fiery
determination and sometimes dull and opaque. Her expression was
never altogether amiable; was often, indeed, distinctly sullen, or,
when she was animated, sarcastic. She was most attractive in
profile, for then one saw to advantage her small, well-shaped head
and delicate ears, and felt at once that here was a very positive,
if not an altogether pleasing, personality.

The entire management of Mrs. Olaf's household devolved upon
her aunt, Johanna Vavrika, a superstitious, doting woman of fifty.
When Clara was a little girl her mother died, and Johanna's life