ost their
primitive tints, and before the window in a low chair sat the lonely
lodger.

On her knees rested a cushion, across which was stretched a parchment
pattern bristling with pins, and with bobbins she was swiftly knitting
a piece of gossamer lace, by throwing the fine threads around the
pins.

Over the floor floated her delicate lilac dress, and the sleeves were
looped back to escape the forest of pins.

Dr. Grey had only a three-quarter view of the face that bent over the
cushion, and though it was sadly altered in every lineament,--was
whiter and thinner than he had ever seen it,--yet it was impossible to
mistake the emaciated features of Salome Owen.

The large, handsome head, had been shorn of its crown of glossy braids
that once encircled it like a jet tiara, and the short locks clustered
with childlike grace and beauty around the gleaming white brow and
temples.

There was not a vestige of color in the whilom scarlet mouth, whose
thin lines were now scarcely perceptible; and, in the finer oval of
her cheeks, and along the polished chin, the purplish veins showed
their delicate tracery. The hands were waxen and almost transparent,
and the figure was wasted beyond the boundaries of symmetry.

In the knot of ribbon that fastened her narrow linen collar, she had
arranged a sprig of mignonette, that now dropped upon the cushion as
she bent over it. She paused, brushed it off, and for a few seconds
her beautiful hazel eyes were fixed on the blue sky that bordered her
window.

The whole expression of her countenance had changed, and the
passionate defiance of other days had given place to a sad, patient
hopelessness, touching indeed, when seen on her proud features. Slowly
she threw her bobbins, and a fragment of "_Infelice_" seemed to drift
across her trembling lips, that showed some lines of bitterness in
their time-chiselling.

As Dr. Grey watched her, tears which he could not restrain trickled
down his face, and he was starting forward, when she said, as if
communing with her own desolate soul,--

"I wonder if I am growing superstitious. Last night I dreamed
incessantly of Jessie and home, and to-day I cannot help thinking that
something has happened there. Home! When people no longer have a home,
how hard it is to forget that blessed home which sheltered them in the
early years. Homeless! that is the dreariest word that human misery
ever conjectured or human language clothed. Never mind, Salome O