But when, with an effect of challenge, she scrutinised her reflection
in the tall cheval glass, the likeness appeared to have vanished. She
saw her head thrust a little forward, her arms stiff, and in her whole
pose an air of vigorous defiance. She was prepared to admit that she
was ugly at that moment, if the ugliness was of another kind than that
she had seen downstairs. No! She drew herself up, more than a little
relieved by the result of her test. The likeness was all a fancy, the
result of suggestions, first by her father and then by Miss Deane
herself. And she need at least have no fear that she was ugly. Why....

She paused suddenly, and the light died out of her face. Her image was
looking back at her stiffly, superciliously, with, so it seemed to her,
the contemptible simper of one who still fatuously admires the thing
that has long since lost its charm. She caught her breath and clenched
her hands, drawing down her rather heavy eyebrows in an expression of
angry scorn. "Oh! never, never, never again, will I look at myself like
that," Rachel vowed fiercely.

She was to find, however, before this first evening was over, that the
mere avoidance of that one pose before the mirror would not suffice to
lay the ghost of the suspicion that was beginning to haunt her.

At the very outset a new version of the likeness was presented to her
when, during the first course of dinner, Miss Deane, with a lowering
frown of her blackened eyebrows, found occasion to reprimand the
elderly parlour-maid. For a moment Rachel was again puzzled by the
intriguing sense of the familiar, before she remembered her own scowl
at the looking-glass an hour before. "Do I really frown like that?" she
thought. And on the instant found herself _feeling_ like her aunt.