From the first moment when,
in the balcony over the church, she had realised that she was in the
presence of the woman she hated, she had determined to destroy her. To
accomplish this she would in any case have used her especial weapons,
and though she had intended to steal by degrees upon her enemy, lulling
her to sleep by a more gentle fascination, at an hour when the whole
convent should be quiet, yet since the first step had been made
unexpectedly and without her will, she did not regret it.
She leaned back and looked at Beatrice during several minutes, smiling
to herself from time to time, scornfully and cruelly. Then she rose and
locked the outer door and closed the inner one carefully. She knew from
long ago that no sound could then find its way to the corridor without.
She came back and sat down again, and again looked at the sleeping face,
and she admitted for the hundredth time that evening, that Beatrice was
very beautiful.
"If he could see us now!" she exclaimed aloud.
The thought suggested something to her. She would like to see herself
beside this other woman and compare the beauty he loved with the beauty
that could not touch him. It was very easy. She found a small mirror,
and set it up upon the back of the sofa, on a level with Beatrice's
head. Then she changed the position of the lamp and looked at herself,
and touched her hair, and smoothed her brow, and loosened the black lace
about her white throat.
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