"I will send you something; and I will come to you, before vespers," said the abbess, kindly, as she glided away from the room. Salome lay alone on the cot, with closed eyes and folded hands, praying for light to see her duty and strength to do it. She expected, in answer to her earnest prayers, that scales should fall from her eyes, and impressions pass from her heart, and that she should see her love in monstrous shape and colors, and be able to thrust him from her heart. Instead of which, she saw him purer, truer, nobler, than ever before. With this perception came a sweet, strange peace and trust which she could not comprehend, and did not wish to cast off. She arose and went into the infants' dormitory, and took up the youngest and feeblest of the babes--the one which, on her very first visit, had so appealed to her sympathies, and which she had adopted as her own. This child, like many others in the asylum, had no known story. A few days before Christmas, late in the evening, a bell had been rung at the main door of the Infants' Asylum. The portress who answered it found there a basket containing an infant a few weeks old. It was cleanly dressed and warmly wrapped up in flannel; but it had no scrap of writing, no name, nor mark upon its clothing by which it might ever be identified. The portress took it into the dormitory, where it was tenderly received and cared for by the sisters on duty there. The case was too common a one to excite more than a passing interest. On the next day after the arrival of the infant, it happened that the mother-superior brought Salome there on her first visit, when the misery of the motherless and forsaken infant so moved the sympathies of the young lady that she immediately took it to her own bosom. Subsequently, since she had devoted herself to the care of these deserted babies, she took an especial interest in this youngest and most helpless of their number. She named it Marie Perdue, and stood godmother at its baptism. It lay in her arms often during the day, and slept at her bosom during the night. It had grown to know its nurse, and to recognize her presence and caresses by those soft, low sounds, half cooing and half complaining, with which very young babes first try to utter their emotions or their wants. Now, as she took little Marie Perdue from the cot, the child greeted her with sweet smiles and soft coos, and nestled lovingly to her bosom. And peace deepened in Salome's heart. She sat down in a low nursing-chair, fed the child with warm milk and water until it was satisfied, and then rocked it and sang to it in a low, melodious voice, until it fell asleep. She was still rocking and singing when the rosy-cheeked and cheery young Sister Felecitie came in.