Page:Maud Howe - A Newport Aquarelle.djvu/148

 forehead with two strait dints, had come only with her cousin s letter. She took her silver comb (she would have liked a golden one) and parted the thick soft hair on her left temple. Yes, there they were, those first terrible finger-marks of time. White hairs—a few, half a dozen, perhaps—just in this spot flecked the dusky mass of hair. No one knew of their existence but Gladys and her maid. The Abigail assured her that they were the result of some knock she must have given her head, for only in this spot was there one to be found; but Gladys refused to console herself with this hypothesis, and accepted the warning which they gave her of the instability of beauty and the flight of time.

For a quarter of an hour she sat motionless, her eyes fixed upon her own shadow, and in that space she reviewed all her past, looked her present in the face, and weighed the possibilities of the future, quietly, coolly, and methodically. She put aside the