deal he was
strengthened by the conviction that he alone suffered for his
folly,--that Mrs. Carlyle was a stranger to feelings that robbed him
of sleep, and clouded his days,--that the heaving tide of his devoted
love had broken against her frozen heart as idly as the surges of the
sea that die in foam upon the dreary, mysterious ruins of the Serapeon
at Pozzuoli.

In the silent watches of the night, as he pondered the brief,
beautiful vision that had so completely fascinated him, he reverently
thanked God that the woman he loved had never reciprocated his
affection, and was not sitting in the ashes of desolation, mourning
his absence. Striving to interest himself more and more in Stanley and
Jessie, who had become inordinately fond of him, his thoughts
continually reverted to Salome, and that subtle sympathy which springs
from the "fellow-being," that makes us "wondrous kind" to those whose
pangs are fierce as ours, began faintly and shyly, but surely, to
assert itself. A shadowy, intangible self-reproach brooded like a
phantom over his generous heart, when, amidst the uncertainty that
seemed to overhang the orphan's fate, he remembered the numberless
manifestations of almost idolatrous affection which he had coldly
repulsed.

In the earnest interest that day by day deepened in the absent girl,
there was no pitiable vanity, no inflated self-love, but a stern
realization of the anguish and humiliation that must now be her
portion, and a magnanimous eagerness to endeavor to cheer a heart
whose severest woes had sprung from his indifference.

More than a year had elapsed, and no letter had ever reached him,--not
even a message in her two brief epistles to Stanley, and Dr. Grey
missed the bright, perverse element that no longer thwarted him at
every turn.

He longed to see the proud, girlish face, with its flashing eyes, and
red lips, and the haughty toss of the large, handsome head; and the
angry tones of her voice would have been welcome sounds in the house
where she had so long tyrannized. To-day, as Ulpian Grey sat in his
own little sitting-room, his eyes were fixed on a copy of Rembrandt's
_Nicholas Tulp_, which hung over the mantelpiece; but the mysteries of
anatomy no longer riveted his attention, and his thoughts were busy
with memories of a fond though wayward girl, whom his indifference
had driven to foreign lands,--to unknown and fearful perils.

Through the windows stole the breath of Salome's violets, a