The lonely woman looked upward, appealingly, and there upon the wall she met—­not as formerly, the gleaming, augurous, inexorable eyes of the Cimbrian Prophetess—­but the pitying God’s gaze of Titian’s Jesus.

When Mrs. Murray returned to the room, Edna sat as still as one of the mummies in the sarcophagus, with her head thrown back, and the long, black eyelashes sweeping her colorless cheeks.

One hand was pressed over her heart, the other held a note directed to St. Elmo Murray; and the cold, fixed features were so like those of an Angel of Death sometimes sculptured on cenotaphs, that Mrs. Murray uttered a cry of alarm.

As she bent over her, Edna opened her arms and said in a feeble, spent tone: 

“Take me back to the parsonage.  I ought not to have come here; I might have known I was not strong enough.”

“You have had one of those attacks.  Why did you not call me?  I will bring you some wine.”

“No; only let me go away as soon as possible.  Oh!  I am ashamed of my weakness.”

She rose, and her pale lips writhed as her sad eyes wandered in a farewell glance around the room.

She put the unsealed note in Mrs. Murray’s hand, and turned toward the door.

“Edna!  My daughter! you have not refused St. Elmo’s request?”

“My mother!  Pity me!  I could not grant it.”

CHAPTER XXXIII.

“They have come.  I hear Gertrude’s birdish voice.”

The words had scarcely passed Mr. Hammond’s lips ere his niece bounded into the room, followed by her husband.

Edna was sitting on the chintz-covered lounge, mending a basketful of the old man’s clothes that needed numerous stitches and buttons, and, throwing aside her sewing materials, she rose to meet the travellers.

At sight of her Gordon Leigh stopped suddenly and his face grew instantly as bloodless as her own.

“Edna!  Oh! how changed!  What a wreck!”

He grasped her outstretched hand, folded it in his, which trembled violently, and a look of anguish mastered his features, as his eyes searched her calm countenance.

“I did not think it would come so soon.  Passing away in the early morning of your life!  Oh, my pure, broken lily!”

He did not seem to heed his wife’s presence, until she threw her arms around Edna, exclaiming: 

“Get away, Gordon!  I want her all to myself.  Why, you pale darling!  What a starved ghost you are!  Not half as substantial as my shadow, is she, Gordon?  Oh, Edna! how I have longed to see you, to tell you how I enjoyed your dear, delightful, grand, noble book!  To tell you what a great woman I think you are; and how proud of you I am.  A gentleman who came over in the steamer with us, asked me how much you paid me per annum to puff you.  He was a miserable old cynic of a bachelor, ridiculed all women unmercifully, and at last I told him I would