onsecrates
the harmony of true home life.

The room assigned to Beryl was at the extremity of the second story,
just beneath the studio; and as the north end of the wings was built at
each corner into projections that were crowned with bell towers, this
apartment had a circular oriel window, swung like a basket from the
wall, and guarded by an iron balcony. Cool, quiet, restful as an
oratory seemed the nest; with its floor covered by matting diapered in
blue, its low, wide bedstead of curled maple, with snowy Marseilles
quilt, and crisply fluted pillow cases; its book shelves hanging on the
wall, surmounted by a copy in oil of Angelico's Elizabeth of Hungary,
with rapt face upraised as she lifted her rose-laden skirt.

The lambrequins of blue canton flannel were bordered with trailing
convolvulus in pink cretonne, and the diaphanous folds of white muslin
curtains held in the centre an embroidered anchor which dragged inward,
as the breeze rushed in through open windows. An arched recess in the
wall, whence a door communicated with the adjoining chamber, was
concealed by a portiere of blue that matched the lambrequins, and the
alcove served as a miniature dressing-room, where the brass faucet
emptied into a marble basin.

In this apartment the imperial sway of dull maroons, sullen Pompeiian
reds, and sombre murky olives had never cast encroaching shadows upon
the dainty brightness of tender rose and blue, nor toned down the
silvery reflection of the great sea of waters that flashed under the
sunshine like some vast shifting mirror.

Travel-worn and very weary, Beryl sat down by the window and looked out
over the lake, that far as the eye could reach, lifted its sparkling
bosom to the cloudless dim blue of heaven, effacing the sky line;
dotted with sails like huge white butterflies, etched here and there
with spectral, shadowy ship masts, overflown by gray gulls burnished
into the likeness of Zophiels' pinions, as their wings swiftly dipped.

Driven by storms of adversity away from the busy world of her earlier
youth, leaving the wrack of hopes behind, she had drifted on the
chartless current of fate into this Umilta Sisterhood, this latter day
Beguinage; where, provided with work that would furnish her daily
bread, she could hide her proud head without a sense of shame. Doctor
Grantlin, in compliance with her request, would keep the secret of her
retreat; and surely here she might escape forever the scrutiny and the