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.

Yet, in a minute had recovered herself, had taken out the picture, and
laid it on the table before her, forcing herself to look long into the
face that from among the medley of silver-topped bottles, pans and
jars, smiled up at her.

As she looked, an inexplicable feeling of uneasiness and insecurity
took possession of her. The fat, fatuous, and smiling face! It seemed
to look with an air of contemptuous toleration upon her as an
interloper; to say with its shallow gaze--"These are Mine. All this is
Mine. It is I, you understand, who am mistress here."

Fascinated by this fancied new expression in the once expressionless
eyes, the Bride looked and looked again--looked till the happy present
slipped away from her and she was back in the unhappy past. The humble
friend, her own poor toilette so soon made, sitting, by gracious
permission, to watch the magnificent toilette of the other woman. In
her bitter heart she felt again the scorn which her mind had always
secretly held for this poor-witted, vulgar creature, who had not the
brains to adapt herself to her husband's altered circumstances, who
angered and shamed him beneath his still exterior, to his face, and
gave him away to the first who would condescend to listen, behind his
back. Who had sat before the dressing-table, watching in the glass the
wide expanse of her bare bosom and white arms, and had boasted of her
jewels and her dress. Babbled of things which should have been sacred
between her husband and herself. How that woman sitting beside her,
with the poor dress and the melancholy, dark eyes, hated her! With what
an agony of pity she pitied the husband! Of what good were money,
position, power to him with such a wife as this! She hated her. Hated
her, as she sat before the glass, smiling at the reflection of her fair
big arms and neck; hated her as, later at the dinner-table, she watched
the husband's face, listening against his will to the woman gabbling
forth some bit of information wh