To the gentle, hapless virgin, to whom such possessions were as the wardrobe of a queen, the temptation to behold them near was too great.  She could not forbear from passing the threshold, and she did with heaving breast.  She approached the bed and gazed; she dared to touch the scented gloves that lay by the outspread petticoat of blue and silver; she even laid a trembling finger upon the pointed bodice, which was so slender that it seemed small enough for even a child.

“Ah me,” she sighed gently, “how beautiful she will be!  How beautiful!  And all of them will fall at her feet, as is not to be wondered at.  And it was always so all her life, even when she was an infant, and all gave her her will because of her beauty and her power.  She hath a great power.  Barbara and I are not so.  We are dull and weak, and dare not speak our minds.  It is as if we were creatures of another world; but He who rules all things has so willed it for us.  He has given it to us for our portion—­our portion.”

Her dull, poor face dropped a little as she spoke the words, and her eyes fell upon the beauteous tiny shoes, which seemed to trample even when no foot was within them.  She stooped to take one in her hand, but as she was about to lift it something which seemed to have been dropped upon the floor, and to have rolled beneath the valance of the bed, touched her hand.  It was a thing to which a riband was attached—­an ivory miniature—­and she picked it up wondering.  She stood up gazing at it, in such bewilderment to find her eyes upon it that she scarce knew what she did.  She did not mean to pry; she would not have had the daring so to do if she had possessed the inclination.  But the instant her eyes told her what they saw, she started and blushed as she had never blushed before in her tame life.  The warm rose mantled her cheeks, and even suffused the neck her chaste kerchief hid.  Her eye kindled with admiration and an emotion new to her indeed.

“How beautiful!” she said.  “He is like a young Adonis, and has the bearing of a royal prince!  How can it—­by what strange chance hath it come here?”

She had not regarded it more than long enough to have uttered these words, when a fear came upon her, and she felt that she had fallen into misfortune.

“What must I do with it?” she trembled.  “What will she say, whether she knows of its being within the chamber or not?  She will be angry with me that I have dared to touch it.  What shall I do?”

She regarded it again with eyes almost suffused.  Her blush and the sensibility of her emotion gave to her plain countenance a new liveliness of tint and expression.

“I will put it back where I found it,” she said, “and the one who knows it will find it later.  It cannot be she—­it cannot be she!  If I laid it on her table she would rate me bitterly—­and she can be bitter when she will.”

She bent and placed it within the shadow of the valance again, and as she felt it touch the hard oak of the polished floor her bosom rose with a soft sigh.