She was turning slowly round and round, with her head tilted back over
her left shoulder; she had just caught sight of her little white nose
as it appeared in a vanishing profile and was adjusting her head at
another and still more interesting angle when the Vicar caught her.
He was well in the middle of the room, and staring at her, before she
was aware of him. The wardrobe door, flung wide open, had concealed
his entrance, but if Ally had not been blinded and intoxicated with
her own beauty she would have seen him before she began smiling,
full-face first, then three-quarters, then sideways, a little tilted.
Then she shut to the door of the wardrobe (for the back view that was
to reassure her as to the utter prettiness of her shoulders and
the nape of her neck), and it was at that moment that she saw him,
reflected behind her in the long looking-glass.
She screamed and dropped the hand-glass. She heard it break itself at
her feet.
"Papa," she cried, "how you frightened me!"
It was not so much that he had caught her smiling at her own face, it
was that _his_ face, seen in the looking-glass, was awful. And besides
being awful it was evil. Even to Ally's innocence it was evil. If it
had been any other man Ally's instinct would have said that he looked
horrid without Ally knowing or caring to know what her instinct meant.
But the look on her father's face was awful because it was mysterious.
Pages:
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96