Only at first
sight--for, if like Beatrice, you were the possessor of a face so
uncommon in type that your lover might, with little fear of disproof,
declare, at all events in England, that there was none other like it,
you might grow superstitious as you looked at an anticipation so
creepily identical, and conceive strange fancies of re-incarnation. What
if this had been you in some former existence! Or at all events, if
there is any truth in those who tell us that in the mould and lines of
our faces and hands--yes! and in every secret marking of our bodies--our
fates are written as in a parchment; would it not be reasonable to
surmise, perhaps to fear, that the writing should mean the same on one
face as on the other, and the fates as well as the faces prove
identical?
Beatrice gave the mask back to Antony, with a little shiver.
"It is very wonderful, very strange, but she makes me frightened. What
was the story the man told you, Antony?"
"No doubt it was all nonsense," Antony replied, "but he said that it was
the death-mask of an unknown girl found drowned in the Seine."
"Drowned in the Seine!" exclaimed Beatrice, growing almost as white as
the image.
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