A faint, dry odour rose from the loosened papers--the intangible scent that indicates the past. It seemed that some world, distant and forgotten, had suddenly put forth a shadowy hand, pointing she knew not whither. Over her brain, fevered from the night's excitement, fell a stillness--an arresting calm; across her thoughts, distorted by mistaken struggles, glided a memory--a picture. She saw herself as she had been before her marriage, in the far-off isolated days when life had been a simple thing, when the world outside Orristown had been a golden realm lying beyond the sunset. How young she had been then! How extraordinarily, indescribably young! How untrammelled in her actions and sweeping in her judgments! As the old existence pressed about her in a cloud of images, she opened the first letter. But so unsteadily, so agitatedly, that, in the opening, five or six of the pages slipped from the packet and fluttered to the writing-table, bringing with them a small unframed ivory miniature that had been wrapped within the sheets. The thin, fragile picture dropped with a faint tinkling sound; Clodagh bent forward to recover it; then paused, leaning over the table in an attitude of attention. The miniature lay face upwards; and, in the strong light of the lamp, its outline and colours shone forth distinctly. It represented the head and shoulders of a man in a scarlet coat and hunting-stock--a man of thirty, with a handsome, defiant face, fine eyes, and an obstinate, unreliable mouth. It lay, looking up into her face, while she stared back at it, as though a ghost had risen from the faded letters. On the night before her marriage she had come upon this miniature of Denis Asshlin; and in a frenzy of renewed grief had thrust it out of sight amongst the papers she had collected. Then, the picture had seemed pitifully sad in its presentment of the dead man in the days of his strength; now, as she looked upon it in the light of subsequent knowledge, it seemed a thing instinct with portent and dread. Sharply and cruelly, the glamour cast by death receded from her memory. She saw Asshlin as she had seen him in life--selfish, obstinate, and yet weak. And, quick as the vision came, another followed. The vision of her-self--of her own attitude towards her existence and her responsibilities. In silent, intent concentration she gazed upon the picture, until at last, seized by an ungovernable impulse, half-instinctive realisation, half-superstitious dread, she caught up the lamp and walked to the dressing-table. There, removing the coloured shade, she laid it upon the table; and, lifting the mirror, looked fixedly at her own reflection, intensified by the crude, strong light. For several minutes she stood quite motionless, her questioning eyes searching the eyes in the glass, her pale face confronting its own reflection. And as she looked, expressions of doubt, of fear, of conviction chased each other across her features.