“Oh, my father! my dear father! my poor, murdered father!  And you! oh you! with the beauty and glory of the archangel, and the cruelty and deceit of the arch fiend, I can never look upon your face again—­never!  The sight would blast me like a flame of fire,” raved Salome, throwing back her head, wringing her hands, and gasping as if for breath of life.

“Ah, my dear lady, I know how hard it is!  Pardon me, my lady, but I feel a mother’s heart in my bosom for you.  Try to be patient, sweet lady, and do not despair.  You are so young yet, hardly more than a child you seem.  You have a long life before you yet.  And if you be good, as I am sure you will be, it will be a happy life, in which these early sorrows will pass away like morning mists,” said the woman, soothingly.

“Oh, never more for me will morning dawn!  Eternal night rests on my soul!  For myself I do not care!  But, oh, my ruined archangel!” she wailed, burying her face in her hands.

A dead silence fell between the two, until Salome, without changing her position, murmured;

“Go on to the end; I will not interrupt you again.  Oh, that I could wake from this night-mare!—­or—­expire in it!  Go on and finish.”

“My lady, while the two men were speaking, they came in sight of the woman who was waiting under the balcony.  Then Mr. John Scott says:  ’Hush! my girl will hear us.’  And they hushed, but it was too late—­she had heard them.  Mr. John Scott came up to her in a hurry, and put a small but heavy bag in her hand, saying that she must take it and take care of it, and never let it go out of her possession, and that she must hurry back to Lone Station and catch the midnight express train back to London, and that he himself would follow her, and join her at home the next night.”

“And all that, too, was proved—­yes, proved by the mouths of two witnesses at the inquest, though they did not either of them recognize the man or the woman,” moaned Salome.

“Mrs. John Scott returned to my house about breakfast time the next morning, my lady, bringing that bag with her, which I noticed she wouldn’t let out of her sight, no, nor even out of her hand, while I was near her.  She wouldn’t answer any of my questions, or give me any satisfaction then, even so far as to tell me where she had been, or if she had seen Mr. John Scott.  So I knew nothing until the next morning, when I got the Times.  I don’t in general care about reading the papers myself, but opened it that morning to see if there was anything in it about the grand wedding at Lone.  And oh!  My lady, I saw how the wedding had been stopped on account of—­on account—­of what happened to Sir Lemuel Levison that night, my lady, as I don’t like to talk of it, or even t think of it.  But when Mrs. John Scott rang her bell that morning, my lady, I took up the paper with her cup of tea, which she always took in bed.  And oh, my lady, when she came to know what had happened