An oval table immediately under the gas-globes held a china stand filled with cigars, and seeing several books lying near it, she took up one.

It was Gustave Dore’s “Wandering Jew,” and, throwing herself down on the rug, she propped her head with one hand, while the other slowly turned the leaves, and she examined the wonderful illustrations.  She was vaguely conscious that the clock struck ten, but paid little attention to the flight of time, and after awhile she closed the book, drew the cushion before the desk to the rug in front of the fire, laid her head on it, and soothed by the warmth and perfect repose of the room fell asleep.

Soon after the door opened wider, and Mr. Palma entered, and walked half way down the room ere he perceived the recumbent figure.  He paused, then advanced on tiptoe and stood by the hearth, warming his white scholarly hands and looking down on the sleeper.

With the careless grace of a child, innocent of the art of attitudinizing, she had made herself thoroughly comfortable; and as the light streamed full upon her, all the marvellous beauty of the delicate face and the perfect modelling of the small hands and feet were clearly revealed.  The glossy raven hair clung in waving masses around her white full forehead, and the long silky lashes lay like jet fringe on her exquisitely moulded cheeks; while the remarkably fine pencilling of her arched brows, which had attracted her guardian’s notice when he first saw her at the convent, was still more apparent in the gradual development of her features.

Studying the face and form, and rigidly testing both by the fastidious canons that often rendered him hypercritical, Mr. Palma could find no flaw in contour or in colouring, save that the complexion was too dazzlingly white, lacking the rosy tinge which youth and health are wont to impart.

Stretching his arm to the escritoire, he softly opened a side drawer, took out an oval-shaped engraving of his favourite Sappho, and compared the nose, chin, and ear with those of the unconscious girl.  Satisfied with the result, he restored the picture to its hiding-place.  Four years had materially changed the countenance he had seen last at the parsonage, but the almost angelic purity of expression which characterized her as a child, had been intensified by time and recent grief, and watching her in her motionless repose he thought that unquestionably she was the fairest image he had ever seen in flesh; though a certain patient sadness about her beautiful lips told him that the waves of sorrow were already beating hoarsely upon the borders of her young life.

Standing upon his own hearth, a man of magnificent stature and almost haughty bearing, Erle Palma looked quite forty, though in reality younger; and the stern repression, the cautious reticence which had long been habitual, seemed to have hardened his regular handsome features.  Weary with the business cares, the professional details of a trip that had yielded him additional laurels and distinction, and gratified his towering pride, he had come home to rest; and found it singularly refreshing to study the exquisite picture of innocence lying on his library rug.