A Quicksilver Cassandra - Page 2

reinforced that very morning by the
receipt of a note from Miss Chapman asking him to dine with her parents
and herself that evening, and to accompany them after dinner to the
opera. Surely that meant a great deal, and Jingleberry conceived that
the time was ripe for a blushing "yes" to his long-deferred question.
So he was here in the Chapman parlor waiting for the young lady to come
down and become the recipient of the "interesting interrogatory," as it
is called in some sections of Massachusetts.

"I'll ask her the first thing," said Jingleberry, buttoning up his Prince
Albert, as though to impart a possibly needed stiffening to his backbone.
"She will say yes, and then I shall enjoy the dinner and the opera so much
the more. Ahem! I wonder if I am pale--I feel sort of--um--There's a
mirror. That will tell." Jingleberry walked to the mirror--an oval,
gilt-framed mirror, such as was very much the vogue fifty years ago, for
which reason alone, no doubt, it was now admitted to the gold-and-white
parlor of the house of Chapman.

"Blessed things these mirrors," said Jingleberry, gazing at the reflection
of his face. "So reassuring. I'm not at all pale. Quite the contrary. I'm
red as a sunset. Good omen that! The sun is setting on my bachelor
days--and my scarf is crooked. Ah!"

The ejaculation was one of pleasure, for pictured in the mirror
Jingleberry saw the form of Marian entering the room through the
portieres.

"How do you do, Marian? been admiring myself in the glass," he said,
turning to greet her. "I--er--"

Here he stopped, as well he might, for he addressed no one. Miss Chapman
was nowhere to be seen.

"Dear me!" said Jingleberry, rubbing his eyes in astonishment. "How
extraordinary! I surely thought I saw her--why, I did see her--that is, I
saw her reflection in the gla--Ha! ha! She caught me gazing at myself
there and has hidden."

He walked to the door and drew the portiere aside and looked into the
hall. There was no one there. He searched every corner of the hall and of
the dining-room at its end, and then returned to the parlor, but it was
still empty. And then occurred the most strangely unaccountable event in
his life.

As he looked about the parlor, he for the second time found himself before
the mirror, but the reflection therein, though it was of himself, was of
himself with his back turned to his real self, as he stood gazing amazedly
into the glass; and besides this, although Jingleberry was alone in the
real parlor, the reflection of the dainty room showed that there he was
not so, for seated in her accustomed graceful attitude in the reflected