The Storm Gathers

The long summer afternoon wore away, sunset came, red and angry, a sunset presaging storm. A chill crept into the air with the twilight. When night fell, it was not a night of silver patterns enskied, but a dark and cloudy cloak where a few stars glittered fitfully. Miss Cornelia, at dinner, saw a bat swoop past the window of the dining room in its scurrying flight, and narrowly escaped oversetting her glass of water with a nervous start. The tension of waiting--waiting--for some vague menace which might not materialize after all--had begun to prey on her nerves. She saw Dale off to the country club with relief--the girl looked a little better after her nap but she was still not her normal self. When Dale was gone, she wandered restlessly for some time between living-room and library, now giving an unnecessary dusting to a piece of bric-a-brac with her handkerchief, now taking a book from one of the shelves in the library only to throw it down before she read a page.

This house was queer. She would not have admitted it to Lizzie, for her soul's salvation--but, for the first time in her sensible life, she listened for creakings of woodwork, rustling of leaves, stealthy steps outside, beyond the safe, bright squares of the windows--for anything that was actual, tangible, not merely formless fear.

"There's too much ROOM in the country for things to happen to you!" she confided to herself with a shiver. "Even the night--whenever I look out, it seems to me as if the night were ten times bigger and blacker than it ever is in New York!"