...of haughtiness

His sister - she was ten years old at the time - had been afraid lest the dead grandmother return. Even in life she had been a majestic ghost moving through the house, tall and big, with a broad coif on her head, snow-white and stiffly starched, her imposing figure enveloped in solemn, stiff black silk, a kind of stone silk, and in her plump and soft white hands she always held a purple rosary. Without visible reason, and apparently with the sole purpose of showing that her silent majesty was still alive, she descended the stair to the kitchen every day, received the obeisances of the cook and servants with a silent inclination of the head, billowed across the yard towards the stables, vouchsafed the groom a cold glance from her big brown eyes, which stood out from their sockets and were perpetually moist, and returned the way she had come. At meals she was enthroned at the head of the table. Father, mother, and the children approached her and kissed her soft, muscleless, and doughy hand before the soup was brought to the table. In the presence of the grandmother no word was ever spoken. There was no sound but the imbibing of the soup and the soft clink of spoons against the dishes. After the soup, when the meat course arrived, the old woman left the table. She went to lie down. Nobody knew whether she really slept, or even rested. During the evening she appeared again, to depart as before after a quarter of an hour. Although she never spoke, or interfered in anything concerning the house or the estate, and was so seldom to be seen, yet her presence was felt by everyone - except by her son, perhaps - as a burden no less unbearable for being never mentioned. The servants hated her and called her "the shadow-queen". Her eyes, perpetually moist, glittered with malevolence, and her wordless hauteur aroused those about her to a hatred equally silent and vindictive. They would gladly have put an end to the shadow-queen, if the opportunity had offered. The children, too, Nicolas and his sister, hated the grandmother in her wicked majesty moving within the folds of heavy stuffs which muffled every sound. And when she died one day, suddenly without warning, and as silently as she had lived, the entire household breathed again - but only for a while.

[Tarabas: A Guest On Earth, Roth, J.]