s there,
which at the time she was far from believing. On the contrary, she would
have wished to prevent a meeting, which, from the attachment of the
missionary to the girls, might interfere with her projects. A little
while after the terrible scene we have just related, Rose and Blanche,
accompanied by Sister Martha, entered a vast room, of a strange and
fatal aspect, containing a number of women who had suddenly been seized
with cholera.

These immense apartments, generously supplied for the purpose of a
temporary hospital, had been furnished with excessive luxury. The room
now occupied by the sick women, of whom we speak, had been used for
a ball-room. The white panels glittered with sumptuous gilding, and
magnificent pier-glasses occupied the spaces between the windows,
through which could be seen the fresh verdure of a pleasant garden,
smiling beneath the influence of budding May. In the midst of all
this gilded luxury, on a rich, inlaid floor of costly woods, were seen
arranged in regular order four rows of beds, of every shape and kind,
from the humble truckle-bed to the handsome couch in carved mahogany.

This long room was divided into two compartments by a temporary
partition, four or five feet in height. They had thus been able to
manage the four rows of beds. This partition finished at some little
distance from either end of the room, so as to leave an open space
without beds, for the volunteer attendants, when the sick did not
require their aid. At one of these extremities of the room was a lofty
and magnificent marble chimney piece, ornamented with gilt bronze.
On the fire beneath, various drinks were brewing for the patients. To
complete the singular picture, women of every class took their turns in
attending upon the sick, to whose sighs and groans they always responded
with consoling words of hope and pity. Such was the place, strange and
mournful, that Rose and Blanche entered together, hand in hand, a short
time after Gabriel had displayed such heroic courage in the struggle
against Morok. Sister Martha accompanied Marshal Simon's daughters.
After speaking a few words to them in a whisper, she pointed out to them
the two divisions in which the beds were arranged, and herself went to
the other end of the room to give some orders.

The orphans, still under the impression of the terrible danger from
which Gabriel had rescued them without their knowing it, were both
excessively pale; yet their eyes wer