A few moments later a group of anxious gentlemen surrounded Mrs. Porfer
as she sat motionless at the foot of the tree, her head dropped forward,
her fingers clutching a crushed photograph. Her husband raised her head,
exposing a face ghastly white, except the long, deforming cicatrice,
familiar to all her friends, which no art could ever hide, and which now
traversed the pallor of her countenance like a visible curse.
Mary Matthews Porfer had the bad luck to be dead.