The sun had set, and within doors it was growing dark. She lighted a lamp, swept and otherwise set to rights her dirty, disorderly kitchen, released her hair from its curl papers, combed, brushed, and arranged it becomingly before a looking-glass hanging on the wall above a side table.
Then, lamp in hand, she went into an adjoining bedroom, where she changed her dingy, dirty dress for a comparatively new and clean one, adding to her adornment collar, cuffs, and a showy breastpin.
She stood for several minutes smiling and simpering at her reflection in the glass; then, pulling open a bureau drawer, took from it a scarlet shawl, which she folded with care and threw over her plump shoulders. Next, a bonnet of crimson cotton velvet profusely trimmed with cheap feathers and flowers was taken from a bandbox, turned about admiringly in her hands, then tried on before the glass with a repetition of the simpering and smiling.
“It’s just splendid!” she said, aloud, “and the becomingest thing out. But what on earth was that?” she cried, starting, and turning toward the window with a frightened look. She had seemed to hear a quick breath, a muttered curse.
She stood for a moment trembling with fear, gazing at the window with dilated eyes. There were no shutters, but a short muslin curtain was drawn across the lower sash, completely obstructing her view of any and everything that might be upon the outside. “What was there?” She dared not go nearer to examine and satisfy her doubts by raising curtain or sash and looking out.
But there was no repetition of the sound, and presently she concluded she had been mistaken; it was all imagination; and she fell to admiring herself and her finery as before.
There was a face at the window, pressed close against the glass, where the parting of the curtain left a slight opening through which a good view might thus be obtained of all that was transpiring within the room. It was the face of a tall, stoutly built man, very much younger than her husband and more comely of feature, but his expression as he glared upon her was at times almost diabolical.
“Yes, them’s the things she’s sold herself fer,” he muttered, grinding his teeth with rage. Then, softening a little, “But she is a purty crayther, an’ it’s mesilf, Phalim O’Rourke, that cud a’most be fool enough to thry her agin if the ould thafe of a husband was out o’ the way.”
Then again, as he watched her childish delight in her finery, the smiling, dancing eyes, the rosy cheeks dimpling, and the red lips wreathing themselves in smiles, his face darkened with jealous rage, and muttered curses were on his tongue. She was happy with his rival, the man who had robbed him of her (the pretty girl who had promised herself to him before he went away to the war) by the superior attraction of a well-filled purse.
The terror in her face when she overheard his curse gave him a sort of fiendish delight for the moment. He would not have cared had she come to the window and found him there, yet he thought it more prudent not to make her aware of his presence or further excite her fears.