d 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.

Salome had once been an enthusiast in music, and a very accomplished
performer on several instruments. Her favorite had always been the harp,
and next to that the guitar.

She was not yet strong enough to play on the former, but she might very
well manage the latter.

So the abbess caused a light and elegant little guitar to be placed in
her room.

Salome never even noticed it; but sat with her eyes fixed on her clasped
hands that lay on her lap.

So November and a good part of December passed, with very little change.

The abbess, whose rule was absolute in her own ho