As the pins were taken out of the heavy dark hair, and the braids untwisted, the eyes of the new mistress and the eyes of the old servant met again and again in the glass. And the thought came to the bride: how often in that same glass those slanting eyes of the maid must have encountered other eyes! Eyes of shallow blue beneath a fringe of yellow-dyed, tousled locks.
The reflection was not a comforting one, and warm and cosy as was the brightly-lit room, she shivered. Hastily casting down her gaze it fell upon a photograph of her husband, taken ten years or so ago, shrined in its silver frame amid the silver accessories of the dressing-table. In order to break a silence which was getting on her nerves—
"Is that the picture which was always here?" she asked.
"Always," the servant replied. "It stood opposite one of my late mistress, taken at the same time, and framed in the same way. After my late mistress's death my master wished to have her photographs removed. He destroyed many of them. I think he destroyed the last to-day."
"Now, how in the world did she know that?" the Bride asked herself, guiltily conscious of the tell-tale face in the looking-glass, reddening before the servant's inquisitive eyes.
"After all, I will brush my hair myself," she said hastily. "I am used to doing it."
The servant, with no sign of either pleasure or displeasure on her shut-up, solemn face, withdrew.
"The silver-backed brushes on the table are those of my late mistress," she said from the door—"my master's last present to her. In the drawer beneath the looking-glass I think you will find your own brushes."
She found them there, and, lying beneath them, face upwards, a photograph of the dead wife.
The two women for years had called each other friend, but the Bride started back from the smiling presentment of the face now as if it had been some loathable thing. Started back, and shut the drawer.