The next day, Monday, the abbess set diligent inquiries on foot to discover whether the Duke of Hereward, or any other stranger of any name or title whatever, had been seen in the neighborhood of St. Rosalie's for many days. Winter was not the season for strangers there. After this, the Duke of Hereward (or his ghost) was seen no more in the chapel. Every time Salome accompanied the sisterhood to the chapel, she peered through the choir-screen, in much anxiety as to whether she should see the duke, or his apparition, among the congregation below; but she never saw him there again, nor could she decide, in the conflict between her love and her sense of duty, whether she most desired or deplored his absence. So the days passed into weeks, and nothing more was heard or seen of the Duke of Hereward. The Christmas holidays came to an end after Twelth-Day; the pupils returned to the school, and the academy buildings grew gay with the exuberance of young life. Salome, who, during many years of her childhood and youth, had shared this bright and cheery school-life, now saw nothing of it. The academy buildings, as has been explained before this, were situated on the opposite side of the court-yard from the asylums and entirely cut off from communication with them. Salome, devoted to her duties in the Infants' Asylum, was more completely secluded from the world than even the cloistered nuns themselves; for the nuns were the teachers of the academy, and in daily communication with their pupils and frequent correspondence with their patrons, saw and heard much of the busy life without. So the weeks passed slowly into months, and the winter into spring, yet nothing more was seen or heard of the Duke of Hereward. Salome lost the habit of looking for him, and gradually recovered her tranquility. In the work to which she had consecrated herself--the care of helpless and destitute infancy--she grew almost happy. Already she seemed as dead to the world as though the "black vail" had fallen like a pall over her head. No newspapers ever drifted into the asylum, nor did any visitor come to bring intelligence of the good or evil of the life beyond the convent walls. Her year of probation was passing away. At its close she would take the white vail and enter upon the second stage of her chosen vocation--her year of novitiate--at the end of which she would assume the black vail of the cloistered nun, which would seal her fate. She knew that before taking that final step she must make some disposition of that vast inheritance which, in her flight from her home, she had left without one word of explanation or instruction. She was assured that her fortune was in the hands of honest men, and there she was content to leave it for the present. She had in her possession about a thousand pounds in money and several thousand pounds in diamonds--ample means for self-support and alms-giving.