Justina spoke with a displeasure that she hardly cared to moderate.  Emily stood listening till she was sure John Mortimer had left her house, then she said something that was meant to serve for an answer, got away as soon as she could, ran up-stairs, hurried to her own room, and locked the door.

“Not alone!” was her first startled thought, but it was so instantaneously corrected that it had scarcely time to shape itself into words.  The large cheval glass had been moved by her own orders, and as she stood just within the door, it sent back her image to her, reflected from head to foot.

She advanced gazing at herself, at the rich folds of her black silk gown made heavy with crape, and at the frail gossamer she carried on her head, and which, as she came on, let its long appendages float out like pennons in her wake.  Emily had such a high, almost fantastic notion of feminine dignity (fantastic because it left too much out of view that woman also is a human creature), that till this day it might almost have been said she had not taken even her own self into her confidence.  She hardly believed it, and it seems a pity to tell.

Her eyes flashed with anger, while she advanced, as if they would defy the fair widow coming on in those seemly weeds.

“How dare you blush?” she cried out almost aloud.  “Only a year and a fortnight ago kneeling by his coffin—­how dare you blush?  I scorn you!”

She put her hands to her throat, conscious of that nervous rising which some people call a ball in it; then she sat down full in view of herself, and felt as if she should choke.  She was so new to the powerful fetters that had hold of her, were dragging her on, frightening her, subduing her.

Was she never to do or to be any more what she chose—­never to know the rest and sweetness of forgetting even for a little while?  Why must she be mastered by a voice that did not care at all whether its cadence and its fall were marked by her or not?  Why must she tremble and falter even in her prayer, if a foot came up the aisle that she could not bear to miss, and yet that was treading down, and doomed, if this went on, to tread down all reviving joy, and every springtide flower that was budding in her heart?

“No more to be kept back than the rising of the tide”—­these were her words—­“but, oh, not foreseen as that is, and not to go down any more.”

She almost raged against herself.  How could she have come there—­how could she, why had she never considered what might occur?  Then she shed a few passionate tears.  “Is it really true, Justina Fairbairn’s would-be rival?  And neither of us has the slightest chance in the world.  Oh, oh, if anything—­anything that ever was or could be, was able to work a cure, it would be what I have seen twice this week.  It would be to watch another woman making a fool of herself to win his favour, and to see him smile and know it.  Oh, this is too miserable, far too humiliating.  The other day, when he came, I cared so little; to-day I could hardly look him in the face.”