something which you desired to prepare me for,--which you intended to
break gently to me. But your kindness is unavailing. The truth crashed
in on my heart without premonition; and I saw, and understood, and
accepted the inevitable; and since then,--ah, my God! since then--"

Her head drooped upon her bosom, and a groan concluded the sentence.

"Perhaps Ulpian only pities the poor woman's desolation, and will lose
his interest in her when she recovers her health. You know how
tenderly he sympathizes with all who suffer, and I dare say it is more
compassion than love."

"What hypocrites we often are, in our desire to comfort those whom we
see in agony! Miss Jane, your kind heart is holding a hand over the
mouth of conscience, to smother its cries and protests while you utter
things in which you know there is no truth. You mean well; but you
ought to know better than to expect to deceive me. I understand the
difference between love and compassion, and so do you; and Dr. Grey
has not kept the truth from you. He has given his heart to that
gray-haired, gray-eyed woman,--and if she lives, he will marry her;
and then, if there were twenty oceans, I should want them all to roll
between us. I tell you now, I can not and will not stay here to see
the day that makes that pale gray phantom his wife. I should go mad,
and do something that might add new horrors to that doomed and
abhorred 'Solitude,' that has become Dr. Grey's Mecca. I could live
without his love, but I can not stand tamely by and see him lavish it
on another. Some women,--such, for instance, as we read of in novels,
would meekly endure this trial, as one appointed by Heaven to wean
them from earth; would fold their hands, and grow devout, and
romantically thin and wan,--and get sweet, patient, martyr expressions
about their unkissed lips; but I am in no respect a model heroine, and
it will prove safer for us all if I am far away when Dr. Grey brings
his bride to receive your sisterly embrace. If you are lonely, send
for Muriel and Miss Dexter, and let them entertain you. Just now, I am
not fit company for any but the dwellers in Padalon; so let me go away
where I can be quiet."

"Stay, Salome! Where are you going?"

"To walk."

The orphan disengaged her dress from Miss Jane's fingers, which had
clutched its folds to detain her, and made her escape just as Muriel
tapped at the door.

During the three weeks that had elapsed since Elsie's death Mrs.
Gerome h