omfort him.

One month before, Salome would have wept and mourned with him, but the
fountain of her tears was exhausted and scorched by the intense
bitterness and despairing hate that had taken possession of her since
the day of Elsie's burial; and stunned and dry-eyed, she watched the
preparations for the obsequies of her benefactress.

Her love for Miss Jane had never been sufficiently fervent to render
her distress very poignant; but in the death of this devoted friend
she was fully aware that at last she was set once more adrift in the
world, without chart or rudder save that furnished by her will.

Life to-day was not the beautiful web, all aglow with the tangling of
gold and silver threads, that had once charmed and dazzled her, for
the mildew of hopelessness had tarnished the gilding, and the mesh was
only a mass of dark knots, and subtle crossings, and inextricable
confusion.

Like that lost star that once burned so luridly in Cassiopeia, and
flickered out, leaving a gulf of gloom where stellar glory was, the
one most precious hope that lights and sanctifies a woman's heart had
waned and grown sickly, and finally had gone out utterly, and dust
and ashes and darkness filled the void. In natures such as hers, this
hope is not allied to the phoenix, and, once crushed, knows no
resurrection; consequently she cheated herself with no vain
expectation that the mighty wizard, Time, could evoke from corpse or
funeral-pyre even a spark to cheer the years that were thundering
before her.

A few months ago the future had glistened as peaceful and silvery as
the Dead Sea at midnight, when a full-orbed Syrian moon glares down,
searching for the palms and palaces that once marked Gomorrah's proud
places; and, like some thirsty traveller smitten with surface sheen,
she had laid her fevered lips to the treacherous margin, and, drinking
eagerly, had been repaid with brine and bitumen.

Disappointment was with her no meek, mute affair, but a savage fiend
that browbeat and anathematized fate, accusing her of rendering
existence a mere Nitocris banquet, where, while every sense is
sharpened and pampered, and fruition almost touches the outstretched
hands of eager trust, the flood-gates of the mighty Nile of despair
are lifted, and its chill, dusky waves make irremediable wreck of
all.

With the quiet thoughtfulness and good sense that characterized her
unobtrusive conduct, Miss Dexter had prepared from Muriel's wardrobe
an