“Well, then, Estelle, you have moved me by your singing as I was never moved before,—so terribly in earnest did you seem! What does it mean?” “It means,” she replied, “that you have adapted the music to a faithful translation of the words.” “I have heard you play,” said I, “but why have you kept me in ignorance of your powers as a singer?” “My powers, such as they are,” she said, “have been rarely used since I left the convent. I can give little time now to music. Indeed, the hour I have given to it this morning was stolen, and I must make up for it. So good by.” “Stay, Estelle,” said I, seizing her hand. “There is a mystery which hangs over you like a cloud. Tell me what it is. Your eyes look as if a storm of unshed tears were brooding behind them. Your expression is always sad. Can I in any way help you? Can I render a true brother’s service?” She stood, looking me in the face, and it was plain, from a certain convulsed effort at deglutition, that she was striving to swallow back the big grief that heaved itself up from her heart. She wavered as if half inclined to reveal something. There was the noise of a carriage at the door; and, pressing my hand gently, she said, with an effort at a smile that should have been a sob, “Thank you; you cannot—help me; my mistress is at the door; good by.” And dropping my hand, she glided out of the room. I can never forget her as she then appeared in her virginal, spring-like beauty, with her profuse silky hair parted plainly in front, and folded in a classic knot behind, with her dress of a light gauze-like material, and an unworked muslin collar about her neck having a simple blue ribbon passing under it and fastened in front with a little cross of gold. How unpretending and unadorned,—and yet what a charm was lent to her whole attire by her consummate grace of person and of action! Mrs. Dufour entered, and I did not see Estelle again that day. ---------- It was that fearful summer when the fever seemed to be indiscriminate in its ravages. Not only transient visitors in the city, but old residents long acclimated, natives of the city, physicians and nurses, were smitten down. Many fled from the pest-ridden precincts. Whole blocks of houses were deserted. There were few doors at which Death did not knock for one or more of the inmates.