“It is amazing and incredible!  That is why, in the face of the evidence of my own eyes and ears, the testimony of other eye and ear witnesses, and of my own certain knowledge, based upon proof as sure as ever formed the foundation of any knowledge, I still feel in my heart of heart that he is guiltless, stainless, noble, pure and true as the prince of noblemen should be,” sighed Salome, adding word upon word of eulogy, as if she could not say enough.

“In the face of all positive proof, and of the convictions of your judgment, your heart tells you that this criminal is innocent,” said the abbess, incisively.

“In the face of all, my heart assures me that he is pure, true, and noble!” exclaimed Salome.

“Do you believe your heart?” gravely inquired the elder lady.

“No; for is it not written:  ’The heart is deceitful, and desperately wicked.’  No, I do not believe my weak and sinful heart, which I know would betray me into the hands of my lover, if I should be so unfortunate as to meet him.”

“You shall not meet him; you shall be saved from him,” answered the abbess.

At that moment a bell was heard to ring throughout the building.

“That calls us to the refectory—­to our happy Christmas festival.  Come, my daughter,” said the lady, rising.

“I cannot go!  Oh, indeed I cannot go, mother.  I am utterly unnerved by what has happened.  I hope you will pardon and excuse me,” pleaded Salome.

“What!  Will you not join us at our Christmas feast?” kindly persisted the abbess.

“Indeed, it is impossible!  I will rest on my cot for a few minutes, and then I will go and take my poor little Marie Perdue on my bosom and rock her to sleep.  I hear her fretting now; and when I hush her cries, she also soothes my heartache.”

“I will send you something; and I will come to you, before vespers,” said the abbess, kindly, as she glided away from the room.

Salome lay alone on the cot, with closed eyes and folded hands, praying for light to see her duty and strength to do it.

She expected, in answer to her earnest prayers, that scales should fall from her eyes, and impressions pass from her heart, and that she should see her love in monstrous shape and colors, and be able to thrust him from her heart.  Instead of which, she saw him purer, truer, nobler, than ever before.  With this perception came a sweet, strange peace and trust which she could not comprehend, and did not wish to cast off.

She arose and went into the infants’ dormitory, and took up the youngest and feeblest of the babes—­the one which, on her very first visit, had so appealed to her sympathies, and which she had adopted as her own.

This child, like many others in the asylum, had no known story.

A few days before Christmas, late in the evening, a bell had been rung at the main door of the Infants’ Asylum.