Meantime, Diana, up in her own room, was engaged in what to her had, of late years, been anything but an agreeable pastime,--namely, looking at herself in the mirror. She was keenly curious to find out what was the change in her appearance which had apparently surprised Madame Dimitrius so much that she could hardly be restrained, even by her masterful son, from expressing open wonderment. She stood before the long cheval glass, gazing deeply into it as if it were the magic mirror of the “Lady of Shalott,” and as if she saw “The helmet and the plume Of bold Sir Lancelot.” Her face was serious,--calmly contemplative,--but to herself she could not admit any positive change. Perhaps the slightest suggestion of more softness and roundness in the outline of the cheeks and an added brightness in the eyes might be perceived,--but this kind of improvement, as she knew, happened often as a temporary effect of something in the atmosphere, or of a happier condition of mind, and was apt to vanish as rapidly as it occurred. Still looking at herself with critical inquisitiveness, she slipped out of her pale blue gown and stood revealed in an unbecoming gauntness of petticoat and camisole,--so gaunt and crude in her own opinion that she hastened to pull the pins out of her hair, so that its waving brightness might fall over her scraggy shoulders and flat chest and hide the unfeminine hardness of these proportions. Then, with a deep sigh, she picked up her gown from the floor where she had let it fall, shook out its folds and hung it up in the wardrobe. “It’s all nonsense!” she said. “I’m just the same thin old thing as ever! What difference Madame Dimitrius can see in me is a mystery! And _he_----” Here, chancing to turn her head rather quickly from the wardrobe towards the mirror again, she saw the charming profile of--a pretty woman!--a woman with fair skin and a sparkling eye that smiled in opposition to the gravity of rather set lip-lines,--and the suddenness of this apparition gave her quite a nervous start. “Who is it?” she half whispered to the silence,--then, as she moved her head again and the reflection vanished, “Why, it’s me! I do believe it’s me!” Amazed, she sat down to think about it. Then, with a hand-glass she tried to recapture the vision, but in vain!--no position in which she now turned gave just the same effect. “It’s enough to drive one silly!” she said--“I won’t bother myself any more about it. The plain truth is that I’m better in health and happier in mind than I’ve ever been, and of course I look as I feel. Only the dear Madame Dimitrius hasn’t noticed it before--and he?--well, he never notices anything about me except that I do his work well, or well enough to suit him. If his mysterious ‘globule’ had killed me, I wonder whether he would have been really sorry?”