The good, old man with the wool-white locks, and the saintly soul housed in the parchment-like body--yes! like this he looked. Yet her dagger thrust had been followed by a rush of royal blood that not only “laced” all his followers and “pooled” about his body, but stained her hand with a stain too deep for an ocean’s waves to wash away. Never since have I read or thought of Duncan without seeing Mrs. Worden’s features beneath the golden round of sovereignty. All the life, the strength, the spirit she had left, was gathered up into the fire of her eyes, and when the ashes of her lids covered their glow, her face was as the face of Duncan, dead. Were Mrs. Worden living now, she would probably be called a “mind reader.” Then many people declared her to be clairvoyant. Be that as it may, she had, beyond doubt, a wonderful power of reading or guessing other people’s thoughts, a power which added greatly to the terror with which she inspired some of her townsmen whose thoughts were not always of a quality or nature to invite close feminine inspection. As for myself, she had divined my thoughts, time and again, with a calm exactitude that filled me with awe; and that day, while I still gazed at her mask-like face, she raised her eyes, looked steadily into mine a moment, and in an even voice asked: “Well? Whom am I like? The Witch of Endor?” and, without a moment’s pause, obediently as a little child, I made answer: “No, ma’am, you are like King Duncan!” A quick frown knit her black brows. Never since that far-away day of the giving of the shawl-pin, had she, by word or sign, hinted at her knowledge of my being an actress, and I saw the allusion to Macbeth was unwelcome to her. However, she quickly recovered from her annoyance, and, with her usual aptness, asked: “Do you find the likeness purely physical, or do I, like the old soldier king, ‘lag superfluous on the stage of life’?” To which I gaily and gratefully replied: “At all events I shall not, like Mistress Macbeth, try to ‘push you from your stool’!” And her answer, to my annoyance, was: “How--how--is she going to do it?” She was thinking aloud, but I knew only too well that her question referred to me; and equally well I knew that a bad quarter of an hour was directly before me. Several times the old lady had declared that I was going to make my mark in the world, but she was greatly puzzled, very naturally, to know how I was to do it. She had, therefore, fallen into a way of analyzing my character, before my very face, with positively brutal frankness, and, so far, she had always failed to find out how I was to attain the success she foretold for me. Really, it seemed a form of vivisection she subjected me to, and I squirmed in unpleasant anticipation when I heard that: “How--how is she going to do it?”