When she found that their bedroom was to be the same which he and his former wife had occupied, she was uncomfortably surprised.
The servant who showed her to that apartment in time for her to change her dress for dinner was the middle-aged woman, calling herself parlour-maid, but who had acted as lady's-maid, factotum, confidante to the dead wife. She had made confidantes of all who would listen, poor woman, pouring out the secrets of her heart, and, as far as she knew them, of her husband's heart, into any stranger's ears.
"Can I be of any assistance to you, madam?" the maid had inquired; and madam, in order not to give offence, accepted for a time her services.
"I like to do my hair myself," she said, "but if you brush it for me I shall be glad."
She did not like this servant who had been on terms of close familiarity with the other woman; while, outwardly acquiescent, she allowed herself to be buttoned into a dressing-gown by the hard, bony fingers, in spirit she protested.
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.