Like that lost star that once burned so luridly in Cassiopeia, and flickered out, leaving a gulf of gloom where stellar glory was, the one most precious hope that lights and sanctifies a woman's heart had waned and grown sickly, and finally had gone out utterly, and dust and ashes and darkness filled the void. In natures such as hers, this hope is not allied to the phoenix, and, once crushed, knows no resurrection; consequently she cheated herself with no vain expectation that the mighty wizard, Time, could evoke from corpse or funeral-pyre even a spark to cheer the years that were thundering before her. A few months ago the future had glistened as peaceful and silvery as the Dead Sea at midnight, when a full-orbed Syrian moon glares down, searching for the palms and palaces that once marked Gomorrah's proud places; and, like some thirsty traveller smitten with surface sheen, she had laid her fevered lips to the treacherous margin, and, drinking eagerly, had been repaid with brine and bitumen. Disappointment was with her no meek, mute affair, but a savage fiend that browbeat and anathematized fate, accusing her of rendering existence a mere Nitocris banquet, where, while every sense is sharpened and pampered, and fruition almost touches the outstretched hands of eager trust, the flood-gates of the mighty Nile of despair are lifted, and its chill, dusky waves make irremediable wreck of all. With the quiet thoughtfulness and good sense that characterized her unobtrusive conduct, Miss Dexter had prepared from Muriel's wardrobe an entire suit of mourning, which she prevailed upon Salome to accept and wear; and, on the morning of the funeral, the latter went down early into the draped and darkened parlor, where the coffin and its cold tenant awaited the last offices that dust can perform for dust. She had not spoken to Dr. Grey for twenty-four hours, and, finding him beside the table where his sister's body lay, the orphan would have retreated, but he caught the rustling sound of her crape and bombazine, and held out his hand. "Come in, Salome." She took no notice of the offered fingers, but passed him, and went around the table to the opposite side. The wrinkled, sallow face, still wore its tranquil half-smile, and, under the cap-border of fine lace, the grizzled hair lay smooth and glossy on the sunken temples. In accordance with a wish which she had often expressed, the ghostly shroud was abandoned, and Miss Jane was dressed in her favorite black silk. Salome had gathered a small bouquet of the fragile white blossoms of apple-geranium, of which the old lady was particularly fond, and, bending over the coffin, she laid them between the fingers that were interlaced on the pulseless heart.