She crossed her chamber and stood before her mirror, gazing intently at her reflection. Presently she withdrew the golden pin from her hair and let its rich masses fall about her shoulders like a bronze-gold veil.
"His wife!" she murmured, smiling wanly at her image; "his wife again after some lapse of time! How long a time? Ah, does he detect some change in me which he is too loyal to notice? With time, come change and decay. How can I tell how changed I may be—in his sight?" She shuddered, and peered more keenly at the mirror. "If I am changed," she concluded, with a pretty assumption of desperate resolution, "it is my duty to repair the ravages of time. I will be dressed like any queen at her bridal. I will wear all my jewels, and let their lustre conceal defects from even his generous eyes. He loves me; but I must struggle to hold that love. My jewels! Where are my jewels? How shall I look in them?"
With feverish haste she opened the compartments of the toilet-table until her eager hands fell upon a casket of dull red leather, faded and bruised. Within, however, the velvet cushions were as fresh and white as though newly lined; there was no more hint that four generations had gazed upon their sheeny lustre than there was hint of age in the priceless gems that nestled, glittering like captured stars, amid their depths.
Romaine uttered a sigh of delight, and, with eager, trembling hands, hung the chained brilliants upon her neck and arms. Then she lighted the candelabra beside the mirror, and stood back, speechless before her own surpassing beauty.
"Would he could see me now!" she exclaimed naïvely, entranced, then bent forward to insert still other jewels in her ears.
At that moment an object set in gold and rimmed with diamonds caught her eye. She had not noticed it before, but now it riveted the inspection of her very soul.
She snatched it from the case with a low, wailing cry, akin to the smothered utterance of one laboring in nightmare, and held it at arm's length, breathless, speechless.
Simply a medallion set in gems, the medallion of a man's face—the face of Colston Drummond!
And it was at this moment, supreme enough to thrill poor Romaine's reviving intellect, that Mrs. Effingham hastily entered the chamber.
The lateness of the hour, coupled with her daughter's incongruous toilet, startled the good lady into the passing fancy that some unexpected crisis had arrived—that Romaine had indeed taken leave of her senses. She uttered some stifled exclamation and stood spell-bound. As quick as thought the girl dropped the miniature into its case and turned to confront the intruder.