“Yes, my child.”

“Then I will write to the Duke of Hereward for the last time, and bid him an eternal farewell.  I will not date my letter from any place; but I will give it to the father-director that he may post it from Rome.  You shall read my letter before I close it, dear mother.  And now, on these terms, will you let me have writing materials?”

“Certainly, my child.  I will send them to you; or rather I will bring them,” answered the meek lady-superior, as she arose and left the room.

In a very few minutes she returned with the required articles.

Salome wrote her letter, and then submitted it to the perusal of the abbess, who accorded it her full approval.

“Now, dear mother, if the father-director will take that with him and post it from Rome, all will be over between the Duke of Hereward and myself!  We shall be dead to each other,” said Salome, as the abbess took the letter and left the room.

Then the invalid sank back, exhausted, in her easy-chair.

In this easy-chair by the window, with her feet upon the footstool, Salome sat day after day of her convalescence; sometimes for hours together, with her hands clasped upon her lap, and her eyes fixed upon the floor, in a sort of stupor; sometimes with her sad gaze turned upon the sear garden, as she murmured to herself: 

“Withered like my life!”

Some one among the nuns was always with her; but she took no notice of her companion, seeming quite unconscious of the sister’s presence.

The abbess had taken care to have books of devotion laid upon her little table, but Salome never opened one of them.

Apathy, lethargy, like a moral death, had fallen upon her.

The story of her sorrows, known only to the abbess, to whom she had confided it on the eve of her illness, was never alluded to.

Salome seemed to have buried it in silence.  The abbess feared to raise it from the dead.

Not one in the convent suspected the real circumstances of the case.

All the sisterhood knew Miss Salome Levison, the young English heiress, who had been educated within their walls; all knew that in leaving the convent, three years before she had declared her intention to return at the end of three years and take the vail.  She had returned, according to her word, and no one was surprised.  Her sickness they considered purely accidental.  They had no knowledge of her marriage.  She was to them still Miss Salome Levison, who had once been their pupil, and was now soon to be their sister.

No newspapers were taken in at the convent, or the nuns might have seen repeated notices of her approaching marriage before it took place, as well as a long account of the ceremony and the breakfast, after they had come off.

The abbess tried many gentle expedients to arouse Salome from her moral torpor, but all her efforts were fruitless.