When Isabel looked into her mirror next morning, the image shown back fairly startled her. Day by day during this eventful week the glass had helped her to grow familiar with reddened eyes, with harsh, ageing lines, and with a pallor which no devices of the toilet could efface. It was not so much an added accentuation of these which riveted her gaze, now, upon the mirror, as the suggestion of a new face—of a stranger’s countenance, reflecting meanings and thoughts of the uncommon kind.

She studied the face at first with an almost impersonal interest; then as the brain associated these lineaments with her own, and made their expression a part of her own spiritual state, she said to this other self in the glass, audibly:

“Another week of this will make you an old woman.” She added, after a pause of fascinated yet critical scrutiny: “Yes, and a wicked woman, too!” There has been what one can only hope is an intelligible reluctance, from the beginning of this recital, to essay analysis or portrayal of Isabel’s thoughts and motives. A complex, contradictory character like hers, striving now to assimilate, now to sway the simple, straightforward, one-stringed natures with which it is environed, may be illustrated; it is too great a task to dissect it. Yet for the once we may venture to look into this troubled mind.

A wicked woman! The phrase which she had addressed aloud to the mocking image in the glass, in mingled doubt and irony, clung to her meditations. Had she ever meant to be wicked—ever deliberately, or even consciously, chosen evil instead of good? No! There was no dubious reservation in her answer. Yet within the week—oh, the horrible week!—she had come to occupy a moral position for which hell could not hold too relentless or fierce a punishment. She had hugged to her heart thoughts which, when they are linked with acts, go to expiation on the gallows. She shuddered now at the recollection of them; she could recall that she had shuddered then, too. Yet all the same these thoughts were a part of her—belonged to her. She had not repelled them as alien, or as unwelcome. Even while in terror at their mien, she had embraced them. Was this not all wickedness?

The reply came, in sophistical self-defense, that no one act or emotion of a life could be judged by itself. The antecedent circumstances, leading up to it, must be taken into account. She had been borne along on the current of a career shaped for her by others. She was not responsible—she had never fought with her destiny—she had done nothing but seek to bring some flowers and light and color into the desolate voyage of life. Was it fair to say that these little innocent, womanish efforts to soften a sterile existence were the cause of the shipwreck—that it was these which had brought her so suddenly, dazed and terrified, into the very breakers on the sinister rocks of crime? No, the answer came again; surely it could not be fair.

Yet she had hated her husband; she had been overjoyed, even while she was affrighted, by the news of his death—or at least there was a tremulous sensation very like joy; she had hailed as her deliverer the young man whom her wild fancy made responsible for that death—yes, had even in her frenzy kissed his hand, the hand which she then believed to have blood upon it, his brother’s blood! her husband’s blood! Were not these the thoughts and actions of a wicked woman? What difference was there between her and the vilest murderess confined for life in a penitentiary?

Or no! What nonsense this was! What single thing had she said or done to bring on the catastrophe? It was an accident—everybody knew that now. But even if it had not been an accident, how would she have been to blame? Was it her fault that she was pleasing in men’s eyes, or that Seth had been attracted by her, and had been sympathetic to her? How could she have helped it? Was there any reason why she should have tried to help it? Was it wrong for her, exiled as she was to this miserable farm life, to make a friend of her cousin—her husband’s brother? And if they had grown to be attached to each other, could it be wondered at?

And it had all been so innocent, too! What single compromising word, even, had ever been spoken! Might not the most blameless of women have had just such a pretty little romantic friendship, without dream of harm?

As for the frantic things she had thought and said on that awful forenoon after the discovery, she strove to put them away from her memory, as born of a hysterical, wholly irresponsible state.

But they would come back, no matter how often banished.

Then, too—perhaps worst of all, for honest John seemed to lay particular stress upon it—was the terrible declaration she had made to Annie. About this there could be no self-deception. She would not pretend to herself that this had been done through any but revengeful? spiteful motives—pure cruelty, in fact. But was she to be thus coolly pushed aside, her romance shattered, her dear day-dream dissipated—and not to be justified in striking back?

This conceited boy—she was able thus to think of Seth now, in his absence, and in the light of the affront she felt he had put upon her—and this country school-teacher, to come billing and cooing in the very hour of her supreme excitement—did they not deserve just what they had received? After all, her words had done no permanent harm.. Doubtless by this time they had all been cleared up. And if Miss Annie did suffer a little, what better was she than other people, to be free all her life from heartaches?

But then came a mental picture of Annie’s calm, sweet, lightful face transfixed with speechless horror at the brutal words—and after it, close and searching, the question: “Why should I have stabbed Annie? She was always kindness itself to me. Was it not heartless to make that poor girl suffer?” And there followed in her mind, as an echo of her first exclamation to the mirror—that had gathered reverberating force from all the thoughts we have striven to trace—the haunting cry: “A wicked woman!”

Afternoon came, and the battle still went on. Bitter condemnation of her own conduct struggled with angry pleas of grievance against others, and the conflict wearied her into what threatened to be a sick headache. The idea of getting out into the open air and seeking relief in a walk, which had been dormantly in her mind all day, finally took form, and led her outside the homestead for the first time since her husband’s death.

Once outside, she walked aimlessly through the orchard—in preference to the high road, where she might meet neighbors—toward the little family graveyard. It was not until she had nearly reached th............