Is it meant to show a false reflection in the first panel? The woman has her hands folded in front of her, but her hem is much to high. She had to be holding her dress up to have her hem out of the water and that much of her shins bare.
(In a creaky Rafiki voice.) "Look harder...." At first I thought that you were trying to hide the face of Beauty's mother again, but then we have that fourth panel of her walking into the water...between this and the ship in a storm dream earlier in the comic, this is making me think that Beauty's mother drowned...or became a swan due to an enchantment, one of the two.