I grew used to her afterward, though never completely;
but as she sat there before me my heart beat as fast as if
the miracle of resurrection had taken place for my benefit.
Her presence seemed somehow to contain his, and I felt
nearer to him at that first moment of seeing her than I ever
had been before or ever have been since. Yes, I remember
my emotions in their order, even including a curious little
tremor that took me when I saw that the niece was not there.
With her, the day before, I had become sufficiently familiar,
but it almost exceeded my courage (much as I had longed for the event)
to be left alone with such a terrible relic as the aunt.
She was too strange, too literally resurgent. Then came a check,
with the perception that we were not really face to face,
inasmuch as she had over her eyes a horrible green shade which,
for her, served almost as a mask. I believed for the instant
that she had put it on expressly, so that from underneath it
she might scrutinize me without being scrutinized herself.
At the same time it increased the presumption that there was
a ghastly death's-head lurking behind it. The divine Juliana
as a grinning skull--the vision hung there until it passed.
Then it came to me that she WAS tremendously old--
so old that death might take her at any moment, before I had time
to get what I wanted from her. The next thought was a correction
to that; it lighted up the situation. She would die next week,
she would die tomorrow--then I could seize her papers.
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