"So I am!" the girl almost whispered. "I'm trying to see something in the mirror—the things she saw in it—or to see her eyes looking into mine. If anything can be haunted, it is this mirror. Think of what has passed before it. But do you know, I don't believe it has ever really intelligently seen anything since the day Queen Mary went away from Holyrood. I feel she ran here, to take one last look into her mirror, and to bid it farewell as she bade farewell to France, gazing and gazing as the land faded from her sight forever. Then, when she'd gone, the glass she loved grew dim as it is now, and blind because it could no longer give back the brightness of her eyes. There's nothing left in it now but sad dreams and memories of the past."
"Did you ever," I asked, "go down into the cellar at midnight on All Hallow E'en with a candle and a mirror and wish to see the face of your future husband?"
"No, indeed," Barrie answered emphatically; "we had no such tricks at Hillard House."
"Now, in this mirror, if any in the world, you might be able to see such a vision, not only at midnight, but on an ordinary afternoon, like this for instance," said I. "Suppose you stop thinking of Queen Mary for a minute and concentrate on yourself. Wish with all your heart for the face of the man you'll love, the man you'll marry, to appear under this clouded surface of glass."
Barrie looked somewhat impressed by my mysterious tone as well as the overwhelming romance of her surroundings. She put her face close to the mirror, and I was about to profit by the situation I'd led up to when some one stepped between us and looked over the girl's shoulder. It was Somerled, who must have come in just in time to overhear my advice, and take advantage of it for himself. But he could not wholly blot me out of the mirror. Both our faces were there, to be seen by Barrie, "as in a glass darkly." She gave a little cry of surprise, and wheeled round to smile at Somerled.
"You came after all!" she exclaimed, forgetting or pretending to forget the solemn rite which had engaged us. But I must admit I was in a mood to be almost superstitious about it. I had prophesied to the girl that she would see reflected the face of the man she was destined to love and marry. An instant later she had seen two faces, Somerled's and mine. Would she love one man, and marry the other? Or would only one of these two men count in her life?
Perhaps Queen Mary's mirror knew. It looked capable of knowing—and keeping—any secret of the human heart.
That night—oh, my prophetic soul!—Morgan Bennett saw Barrie at the theatre, and looked at her through his opera-glasses almost as often as he looked at Mrs. Bal in her gay, exciting comedy-drama, "The Nelly Affair." The play had been written for the actress and suited her exactly. In fact its whole success was made by her magnetic personality, her beauty, and her dresses. She scarcely left the stage, and had something to do or say every minute, yet I noticed that she found opportunities to observe where Bennett's eyes were straying. As for Barrie, she saw nothing, heard nothing, thought of nothing, but her mother, glorious Barbara, who for this evening was Nelly Blake, a girl of eighteen, seeming not a day older. Barrie, in a white dress, with her hair in two long braids (Mrs. Bal thought she was too young to wear it done up), sat among us in an ecstasy. Was ever any one so beautiful, so clever, so altogether marvellous as darling Barbara? This was as it should be; and we who knew the girl, knowing that she had never before seen a play, nor the inside of a theatre, thought her pathetic; but Morgan Bennett, who did not know her, merely thought her pretty and wondered how he could get to know her. The very flash of his opera-glasses was interested and eager; and when I proudly took the girl behind the scenes to compliment Mrs. Bal after the first act, I was far from surprised to see Bennett appear almost immediately in the same mystic region. Barrie and I were with Barbara in a little room which she intended to use as a boudoir for the week of her engagement; and when an employé of the theatre announced Mr. Bennett, she looked annoyed. For an instant she hesitated visibly; but as he was probably aware that she had visitors, there was no good excuse for sending him away. Part of Mrs. Bal's success with men consists in knowing what kind of snubs they will meekly endure from a lovely spoiled woman, what kind they neither forget nor forgive. She sent word to Mr. Bennett that he might come in.
He accepted the invitation promptly, and Barbara, with quick presence of mind, introduced him to her little "sister Barribel."