Rose took measurements for new curtains in all the rooms on the lower floor, then climbed the creaking stairway. She came upon Isabel in the sitting-room, upstairs, standing absorbed before an open desk. In her hand she held something which gleamed brightly, even in the gathering shadow.
"Isabel!" she cried, in astonishment.
The girl turned and came forward. Her eyes were sparkling. "Look! There's a secret drawer in the desk and I found this in it. I love secret drawers, don't you?"
"I never have looked for them in other people's houses," Rose answered, coldly.
"I never have either," retorted Isabel, "except when I've been invited to clean other people's houses."
There was something so incongruous in the idea of Isabel cleaning a house that Rose laughed and the awkward moment quickly passed.
"Look," said Isabel, again.
Rose took it from her hand—a lovely miniature framed in brilliants. A sweet, old-fashioned face was pictured upon the ivory in delicate colours—that of a girl in her early twenties, with her smooth, dark hair drawn back over her ears. A scarf of real lace was exquisitely painted upon the dark background of her gown. The longing eyes held Rose transfixed for an instant before she noted the wistful, childish droop of the mouth. The girl who had posed for the miniature, if she had been truthfully portrayed, had not had all that she asked from life.
"Look at this," Isabel continued.
She offered Rose a bit of knitting work, from which the dust of years fell lightly. It had once been white, and the needles were still there, grey and spotted with rust. Rose guessed that the bit had been intended for a baby's shoe, but never finished. The little shoe had waited, all those years, for hands that never came back from the agony in which they wrung themselves to death in the room beyond.