“And a lover too, if I am not mistaken,” Miss Leonard mused, her glance resting tenderly upon the pained, downcast face of her gentle companion. “Poor child! and yet trouble has not hardened or embittered her as it did me. Well, the Bible says ‘a little child shall lead them,’ and I believe she is leading me into a state I never should have reached if some pitiful fate had not sent her to me.” She asked no more questions to pain her, however, but from that day there was an added gentleness in her manner toward her companion. So while Dr. Winthrop and his family, with the Rochesters, were wintering in Paris, Salome was spending a very pleasant season in Rome with Miss Leonard. Late in the spring, however, they again turned their faces northward, reaching Paris about the middle of May, and all of our _dramatis personæ_ were together within the walls of that doomed city. Miss Leonard and her party were within a stone’s throw of the Place de la Concorde, and did not once dream of the terrible experiences through which they were soon to pass. Being by themselves, and absorbed in their sightseeing, they did not realize, neither did they have any one to warn them of the danger they were in. They knew that the city was in a state of unusual excitement, but did not suppose they could suffer from it, and the insurrection burst like a thunderbolt upon them. Every avenue of escape was closed, and they were prisoners in the turbulent place before they were aware of the fact. They were filled with anxiety and dismay upon discovering their situation; but Miss Leonard, who had been brought up a Catholic, was suddenly inspired with a bright and sagacious plan. She visited one of the convents of the city, explained to the mother-superior her unprotected condition, and begged to be admitted, with her maid and companion, as boarders within its protecting walls. Her request was readily granted, and the timid trio immediately became inmates of the gray nunnery. They were there when the cholera broke out, and Miss Leonard was the very first one in the building to fall a victim to the dreaded disease. She insisted from the first that she could not get well, although she was not violently attacked, and her attendants did not consider her dangerously ill. During her illness she related her whole history to Salome. We cannot rehearse it here, as it has no direct bearing upon our story, but the young girl did not wonder, as she listened, that the woman’s nature had become embittered and warped by her troubles.