"How camest thou by this?" I asked sternly.
The old woman, her back to me, was groping again in the box. "Let not the Señor be troubled," she said dryly, "for the mirror was handed down to me from my fathers, who dwelt here in the days of yore. It is mine; be not uneasy on that score."
And then from the box she drew a little stone image of a man, grotesquely shaped, with great staring eyes, and with a cold, sinister expression upon his carved face. She set it on the floor in front of me; as I looked at it, the face reminded me of someone whom I had seen. Yes, the same hard, cold look and hawk nose of Lord Dunraven; I was struck by the resemblance, for rough, uncouth as the image was, it resembled my lord.
The old crone had sprinkled a yellow powder in front of the idol, and had lit it, and now she was kneeling in front of the image, crooning a low savage song, her eyes, keen and piercing through the smoke, fixed upon me. I rose in disgust. Was I a fool, to sit through such mummery as this?
She called to me even as I stirred, "Let not the Señor arise; but a moment, and he will behold a sight upon the mirror such as he has never seen before. Let him wait but a moment, and gaze upon the disk."
There was something in that look, eager, commanding, fixed upon me, that I could not resist. I resumed my seat.
"I will remain but a moment," I said. "Quick with thy foolery, I am wearied and would go."
"Look upon the glass!" she shrieked. "Look!"
I looked down carelessly at the mirror in my hand. Unaccountably, marvelously, there was something dim, misty, and hazy, growing upon the polished disk; more and more distinct it became, until wonder of wonders, I looked into the violet eyes of Lady Margaret Carroll!—there, lovely, beautiful, divine, she gazed at me, gowned for some ball, a flower in her hair, the soft curved neck encircled by a chain of precious stones, her lovely dimpled chin, and little mouth curved as though laughing at its own red beauty. For a moment I looked at her, and then I was gazing at the vacant glass in my hand.