But, ah! Salome could not confine her attention to the service! Her eyes, guard them carefully as she might, would wander from her missal toward the stalwart form and stately head of the stranger in that third pew front; her thoughts would wander back to the past, forth to the future, or, if they stayed upon the present at all, it was but in connection with that stranger. Father F----, the great English priest, preached the sermon, from the text: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men." He preached with all the force, fervor and eloquence inspired by the Divine words, and he was heard with rapt attention by all the cloistered nuns and all the common congregation--by all within the sound of his voice, perhaps, except one--the most sorrowful one on that glad day. Salome tried in vain to follow the golden thread of his discourse. But how little she was able to do, may be known from the deep sigh of relief she heaved when it was all over. As soon as the benediction was pronounced, the nuns arose to leave their screened choir, and the congregation got up to go out from the chapel. Salome lingered behind the sisterhood, and watched the handsome stranger in the third pew front--a stranger to every one present except herself. He also lingered behind all his companions, and turned and looked intently up into the screened choir. Salome saw his full face for the first time since his appearance there--and she saw that it was deadly, ghastly pale, with white lips and glassy eyes. He gazed into the screened choir as into vacancy. Salome knew that he could see nothing there, yet she shrank back and stood in the deepest shadow, until she saw him pick up his hat and glide from the chapel, the last man that went out. "Ah, what could have changed him so?" she thought--"love, fear, remorse--what?" He had nothing to fear from her. If no one should take vengeance on him until she should do so, then would he go unpunished to his grave, and his sin would never have found him out in this world. Nay, sooner than to have hurt him in life, liberty, honor, or estate, she, herself, would have borne the penalty of all his crimes. Yet of those crimes what an unspeakable horror she had, though for the criminal what an unutterable pity--what an undying love. While she stood there, gazing through the choir-screen upon the spot whence the stranger had disappeared, her bosom, torn by these conflicting passions of horror, pity, love, she felt a soft touch on her shoulder, and turning, saw the mother-superior at her side. "My daughter, why do you loiter here?" she tenderly inquired. Salome's pale face flushed, as she replied: "Oh, mother, I was watching him until he left the church." "My daughter, it was a deadly sin to do so!" gravely replied the abbess. "He could not see me, mother," sighed Salome, in a tremulous voice.