“I think perhaps your mother had found that beauty is not always a blessing, Kilmeny, and thought it wiser not to let you know you possessed it.  Come, let us go back to the orchard now.  We mustn’t waste this rare evening in the house.  There is going to be a sunset that we shall remember all our lives.  The mirror will hang here.  It is yours.  Don’t look into it too often, though, or Aunt Janet will disapprove.  She is afraid it will make you vain.”

Kilmeny gave one of her rare, musical laughs, which Eric never heard without a recurrence of the old wonder that she could laugh so when she could not speak.  She blew an airy little kiss at her mirrored face and turned from it, smiling happily.

On their way to the orchard they met Neil.  He went by them with an averted face, but Kilmeny shivered and involuntarily drew nearer to Eric.

“I don’t understand Neil at all now,” she wrote nervously.  “He is not nice, as he used to be, and sometimes he will not answer when I speak to him.  And he looks so strangely at me, too.  Besides, he is surly and impertinent to Uncle and Aunt.”

“Don’t mind Neil,” said Eric lightly.  “He is probably sulky because of some things I said to him when I found he had spied on us.”

That night before she went up stairs Kilmeny stole into the parlour for another glimpse of herself in that wonderful mirror by the light of a dim little candle she carried.  She was still lingering there dreamily when Aunt Janet’s grim face appeared in the shadows of the doorway.

“Are you thinking about your own good looks, lassie?  Ay, but remember that handsome is as handsome does,” she said, with grudging admiration—­for the girl with her flushed cheeks and shining eyes was something that even dour Janet Gordon could not look upon unmoved.

Kilmeny smiled softly.

“I’ll try to remember,” she wrote, “but oh, Aunt Janet, I am so glad I am not ugly.  It is not wrong to be glad of that, is it?”

The older woman’s face softened.

“No, I don’t suppose it is, lassie,” she conceded.  “A comely face is something to be thankful for—­as none know better than those who have never possessed it.  I remember well when I was a girl—­but that is neither here nor there.  The Master thinks you are wonderful bonny, Kilmeny,” she added, looking keenly at the girl.

Kilmeny started and a scarlet blush scorched her face.  That, and the expression that flashed into her eyes, told Janet Gordon all she wished to know.  With a stifled sigh she bade her niece good night and went away.

Kilmeny ran fleetly up the stairs to her dim little room, that looked out into the spruces, and flung herself on her bed, burying her burning face in the pillow.  Her aunt’s words had revealed to her the hidden secret of her heart.  She knew that she loved Eric Marshall—­and the knowledge brought with it a strange anguish.  For was she not dumb?  All night she lay staring wide-eyed through the darkness till the dawn.