The story opens with the death and belated burial of an elderly aunt whose household remembers her as remote and solitary. A superstitious maid claims the aunt had been seen poring over a dusty notebook that later disappeared, and predicts a surprise at the funeral. The narrative sketches domestic details — the aunt's austere room, ritual gifts of gold coins to two young relatives — and explores family indifference, generational estrangement, and the persistence of private secrets and superstition amid everyday life.