"Perhaps Ulpian only pities the poor woman's desolation, and will lose his interest in her when she recovers her health. You know how tenderly he sympathizes with all who suffer, and I dare say it is more compassion than love." "What hypocrites we often are, in our desire to comfort those whom we see in agony! Miss Jane, your kind heart is holding a hand over the mouth of conscience, to smother its cries and protests while you utter things in which you know there is no truth. You mean well; but you ought to know better than to expect to deceive me. I understand the difference between love and compassion, and so do you; and Dr. Grey has not kept the truth from you. He has given his heart to that gray-haired, gray-eyed woman,--and if she lives, he will marry her; and then, if there were twenty oceans, I should want them all to roll between us. I tell you now, I can not and will not stay here to see the day that makes that pale gray phantom his wife. I should go mad, and do something that might add new horrors to that doomed and abhorred 'Solitude,' that has become Dr. Grey's Mecca. I could live without his love, but I can not stand tamely by and see him lavish it on another. Some women,--such, for instance, as we read of in novels, would meekly endure this trial, as one appointed by Heaven to wean them from earth; would fold their hands, and grow devout, and romantically thin and wan,--and get sweet, patient, martyr expressions about their unkissed lips; but I am in no respect a model heroine, and it will prove safer for us all if I am far away when Dr. Grey brings his bride to receive your sisterly embrace. If you are lonely, send for Muriel and Miss Dexter, and let them entertain you. Just now, I am not fit company for any but the dwellers in Padalon; so let me go away where I can be quiet." "Stay, Salome! Where are you going?" "To walk." The orphan disengaged her dress from Miss Jane's fingers, which had clutched its folds to detain her, and made her escape just as Muriel tapped at the door. During the three weeks that had elapsed since Elsie's death Mrs. Gerome had not left the house, and the third day after the funeral she laid her head down on the pillow from which it seemed probable she would never again lift it. A low steady fever seized her, and at length her brain became so seriously affected that all hope of recovery appeared futile and delusive. In the early stages of her illness, Dr. Grey requested Salome to assist him in nursing her, but the girl dared not trust herself to witness the manifestations of an affection that nearly maddened her, and had almost rudely refused compliance.