ately,--

"Do not think me ungrateful,--do not think me insensible to your love
and kindness; but, indeed I am very miserable here. Oh, Miss Jane! if
you knew how I have suffered, you would not chide, you would only pity
and sympathize with me; for your heart will never steel itself against
your poor wretched Salome!"

She lost control of herself, and sobbed violently.

"My dear little girl, tell me all your sorrows. To whom can you reveal
your trials and griefs, if not to me? For some weeks past I have
observed that you shunned my gaze, and seemed restless when I
endeavored to discover how you were employing your time; and I have
realized that you were sorely distressed, but I disliked to force your
confidence, or appear suspicious. Now, I have a right to ask what
makes you miserable in my house? Is the little girl ashamed to show me
her heart?"

"One month since, I would have gone to the stake rather than have
shown it to you, or have had any one dream of the wretchedness locked
in its chambers; but a week ago I was overwhelmed with humiliation,
and now I am not ashamed to tell you. Now that Dr. Grey knows it, I
would not care if the whole world were hissing and jeering at my
heels, and shouting my shame with a thousand trumpets. I tried to keep
it from him, and failing, the world is welcome to roll it as a sweet
morsel under its busy, stinging, slanderous tongue. Miss Jane, I have
intended to be sincere in every respect, but it appears that, after
all, I have probably been an arrant hypocrite if you believe that I
dislike your brother. I want to go away, because I can no longer
endure to live in the same house with Dr. Grey, who shows me more
plainly every hour that he can never return the affection I have been
idiotic and presumptuous enough to cherish for him. There! I have said
it,--and my lips are not blistered by the unwomanly confession, and
you still permit my head to rest in your lap. I expected you would be
indignant and insulted, and gladly send such a lunatic from your
family circle,--or that you would dismiss me coolly, with lofty
contempt; but only a woman can properly pity a woman's weakness, and
you are crying over me. Ah, if your tears were falling on my grave,
instead of my face!"

Miss Jane was weeping bitterly, but now and then she stooped and
kissed the quivering lips of her unhappy charge, who found some balm
in the earnest sympathy with which her appeal was received.

"My precious child,