face and plain hair, and the severe, funereal black and white
of her surroundings, made a very ghastly picture altogether.

The Sister Francoise sat there in attendance on her.

The mother-superior dismissed the nun, took her vacated seat, and looked
in the face of her guest.

Salome seemed utterly unconscious of the superior's presence. She sat
with her hands clasped upon her lap and her eyes fixed upon the floor.

"Salome, my daughter, how is it with you?" softly inquired the abbess,
taking one of the limp, thin hands within her own, and tenderly pressing
it.

"I am the queen of sorrow, crowned and frozen on my desert throne,"
murmured the girl, in a trance-like abstraction.

"Salome, my child!" said the mother-superior, gazing anxiously into her
stony face, whose eyes had never moved from their fixed stare; "Salome,
my dear daughter, look at me."

"'I am the star of sorrow, pale and lonely in the wintry sky.'"

"My poor girl, what do you mean?"

"I read that somewhere, long ago,--oh, so long ago, when I was a happy
child, and yet I wept then for that solitary mourner as I am not able to
weep now for myself, though it suits me just as much," murmured Salome,
in the same trance-like manner, still staring on the floor, as she
continued:

"Yes, just as much, just as much, for--

"Never was lament begun
By any mourner under sun
That e'en it ended fit but one!"

"Salome, look at me, speak to me, my dear daughter," said the abbess,
tenderly pressing her hand, and seeking to catch her fixed and staring
eyes.

Salome slowly raised those woeful eyes to the lady's face, and asked:

"Mother, good mother, did you ever know any one in all your life so
heavily stricken as I am?"

The abbess put her arms around the young girl and drew her head down upon
her own pitying bosom, as she replied:

"Have I ever known one so heavily stricken as you? My child, I cannot
tell. 'The heart knoweth its _own_ bitterness,' and one cannot weigh
the grief of another. Salome, you have been heavily smitten; but so have
many others. Daughter! I never do speak of my own sorrows. They are past,
and 'they come not back again.' But I think it might do you good to hear
of them now. Child! like _you_, I never knew a mother's love; but
there were three beings in the world whom I loved, as _you_ love,
with inordinate and idolatrous affection. They were my noble father, my
only brother, and my affianced husband. Salome, in the Revolution o