.

"It will be a day of grace for me," she said, as she laid her fair head
on the pillow to sleep.

CHAPTER LX.

"THIS WOMAN SHALL NEVER KNOW."

Leone stood alone in her pretty drawing-room, the room from which she
could see the hills and the trees, and catch glimpses of pretty home
scenery that were unrivaled. She stood looking at it now, her eyes fixed
on the distant hills, her heart re-echoing the words: "In the grave
alone is peace." In her heart and mind all was dross; she seemed to have
lost the power of thinking; she had an engagement to sing in her
favorite opera on the evening previous. Hundreds had assembled to hear
her, and at the last moment they were compelled to find a substitute.
Leone could not sing; it was not that her voice failed her, but to her
inexpressible sorrow, when she began to tell the woes of another her
mind wandered off into her own. In vain she tried to collect herself, to
save herself from the terrible whirl of her brain. "Surely I am not
going mad." She bent her head on her hands, and sighed deeply; if she
could but save herself, if she could but tell what to do. The night
before, only a few hours previous, it seemed to her her heart and brain
had been on fire, first with jealousy, then with love, then with anger.
By accident, as she was going to her wardrobe, her hands fell on a
large, beautiful copy of the Bible. She opened it carelessly, and her
eyes fell on the words: "For the wicked there shall be no abiding-place,
neither shall they find rest forever."

Rest, that was what she wanted, and if she were wicked she would not
find it for evermore. What was being wicked? People had behaved wickedly
to her, they had taken from her the one love that would have been the
stay of her life; they had made her most solemn vows nothing. She had
been wickedly treated, but did it follow that she must be wicked?

"I could never be a sinner," she said; "I have not the nerve, I have not
the strength. I could never be a sinner."

Lightly enough she turned those pages; she saw the picture of Ruth in
the corn-field--simple, loving Ruth, whose words have stood the finest
love-story ever written since she uttered them. There was another
picture of Queen Esther fainting in the awful presence of Ahasuerus the
king; another of a fair young Madonna holding in her arms a little
child; another of the Magdalen, her golden hair wet with tears; another
of a Sacred Head bent low in the agonies of dea