Rose Marie drew in her breath and listened. Maman was evidently not yet coming up. All was still on this upper floor of the house. Rose Marie put her feet to the ground and rose from her bed. She picked up the candle from the table and tripped across the room to where—on the whitewashed wall opposite—there hung a small gilt-framed mirror.
Into this she peeped, holding the candle well above her head. Her face wore neither the look of vanity, nor even that of satisfaction: rather was it a look of the closest possible scrutiny. Rose Marie turned her head to right and left again, but not—this time—in order to enact a private comedy, but in order to convince herself in her own mind that her cheeks had indeed that peach-like bloom, which her overfond father had so oft proclaimed, and that her hair was sufficiently brilliant in colour to be called golden, and yet not too vivid to be called "roux."
We may take it that this scrutiny, which lasted nearly twenty minutes, was of a satisfactory character, for presently, with a happy little sigh, and heaving breast, Rose Marie tripped lightly back to her narrow bed in the wall, and squeezed herself well within the further dark angle, to which the flickering light of the tallow candle had no access.
This she did because she had heard maman's step on the stairs, and because her own cheeks now were of a flaming red.
PART II
CHAPTER IV
For what is wedlock forced but a hell.
—1 Henry VI. V. 5.