Of course, Rumor could not help busying herself with a subject so inviting as the artist, though so bare of definite results. She was variously reported to be an escaped nun, a bride that had nearly lost her life at the hands of an insane bridegroom, a widow--barely one month a wife--seeking to throw off an intolerable burden of grief by the help of new scenes, new faces, and a new manner of life, and an heiress, fled from the importunities of harsh guardians and an unwelcome suitor. It will serve as an indication of the occasional correctness of the popular instinct, that not one of these conjectures cast any shadow upon the whiteness of her fame. Not more inevitably did her face suggest snow, marble, and whatever was at once white and cold, than her demeanor suggested their chill purity. Moreover, notwithstanding that she led so unfettered and independent a life, as compared with the majority of her sex--dwelling under her own guardianship, and ordering her day's routine to her own liking--the closest scrutiny could not detect anything therein, that was not austere, lonely, and laborious enough to suit the cell of an anchorite. Yet, though there was so little in her way of living to suggest affluence, it soon became known that her hands were open, and her purse deep, to any claim upon her benevolence. While it never appeared that she set herself to seek out objects of charity, to such as came to her, either in person or by proxy, her bounty was generally far in excess of the demand. The only grace which it lacked, was that subtle element of the giver in the gift, which imparts a sympathetic warmth to the silver or the gold, as it is dropped in the outstretched hand; augmenting, to a degree incalculable by any known arithmetic, its power of relieving the distressed heart. Though Miss Thane gave generously, she gave none the less carelessly and coldly.