Maria fell asleep that night with the full assurance that she had not been mistaken concerning the beauty of the little face which she had seen in the looking-glass.

All that troubled her was the consideration that her aunt Maria, whose homely face seemed to glare out of the darkness at her, might have looked just as she did when she was her age.

She hoped, and then she hoped that the hope was not wicked, that she might die young rather than live to look like her aunt Maria.

She pictured with a sort of pleasurable horror, what a lovely little waxen-image she would look now, laid away in a nest of white flowers.

She had only just begun to doze, when she awoke with a great start.