“Should I not know mine?” inquired the abbess, very patiently.

Salome made a gesture of desperate perplexity, and then there was a silent pause, during which the two women sat gazing in each other’s faces in silent wonder.

Suddenly Salome started up in wild excitement and began pacing the narrow cell with rapid steps, exclaiming: 

“There have been strange cases of counterparts in persons of this world so exact as to have deceived the eyes of their most intimate friends.  If this should be a case in point!  Great Heaven, if it should!  If this Count Waldemar de Volaski should be such a perfect counterpart of the Duke of Hereward as to have deceived even my eyes and ears!  Oh, what joy!  Oh, what rapture!  What ecstacy to find ‘the princely Hereward’ as stainless in honor as he is noble in name; and this most unprincipled Volaski the real guilty party!  But—­the marriage certificate in Hereward’s own name!  The letters to his so-called ‘wife,’ Rose Cameron, in Hereward’s own handwriting!  Ah, no! there is no hope! not the faintest beam of hope!  And yet—­”

She suddenly paused in her wild walk, and looked toward the abbess.

That lady was still sitting on the stool, at the foot of the cot, with her hands folded on her lap, and her eyes cast down upon them as in deep thought or prayer.

Salome sat down beside her, and inquired in a low tone: 

“Mother Genevieve, was the Count Waldemar de Volaski ever in Scotland?  Has he been there within the last twelve months?”

The lady lifted her eyes to the face of the inquirer, and slowly replied: 

“My daughter, how should I know?  Have I not said that, until this day, when I have seen him in the flesh standing in this room, I had believed him to have been in purgatory for twenty-five years or more?”

“True! true!” sighed Salome.

The abbess folded her hands, cast down her eyes, and resumed her meditations or prayers.

“You heard that he was killed in a duel, you say?” persevered Salome.

“Yes; the news of his treachery, and the news of his death at the hands of the Duke of Hereward reached me at the same moment in this convent, where I was then passing the first year of mourning for my parents.  It was that news which decided me to take the vail and devote my life and fortune to the service of the Lord,” said the lady, reverently bending her head.

Salome sat staring stonily as one petrified.  She was absolutely speechless and motionless from amazement for the space of a minute or more.  Then suddenly recovering her powers, she exclaimed: 

“Mother!  Mother Genevieve!  For Heaven’s sake!  Did I understand you?  From whose hand did you hear Count Waldemar received his death in a duel?”

“From the hand of the deeply injured husband, of course.”

“But—­who was he?  Who?  You mentioned a name!” wildly exclaimed Salome.