e that I am nervous and excitable, and that I have conjured up
this image in my brain--such a ghastly, ghostly image, mother! It could
not have been real, though I thought nothing else this morning than that
it was real. But this evening--oh! madam, if you had seen it, with its
blanched face and glazed eyes, like a sceptre risen from the grave!"

"I have not seen the man yet, either this morning or this evening," said
the elder lady, as she drew the younger's arm within her own.

"No, you have never seen him. I have no one's eyes but my own to test the
matter. You have never seen him, and that is another reason why I think
of the man as ghostly or unreal," whispered Salome.

They were now in the long passage leading from the chapel to the cells.

"I will take you again to your own little room in the Infants' Asylum,"
murmured the lady, as she turned with her protegee into the rectangular
passage leading to the asylums.

She took Salome to the door of the house, gave her a benediction, and
left her.

"Out there I have trouble, here I shall have peace," muttered the young
woman, as she entered the children's dormitory, where every tiny cot was
now occupied by a little, sleeping child.

Salome prepared to retire, and in a few moments she also was at rest,
with her little Marie Perdue in her arms.

Christmas had come on Saturday that year. The next day being Sunday,
there was another high mass to be celebrated in the chapel.

Salome, as usual, joined the nuns' procession to the choir, where the
sisterhood, as was their custom, took their seats some few minutes before
the entrance of the priest and his attendants.

With a heart almost pausing in its pulsations, Salome bent forward to
peer through the screen upon the congregation, to see if by any chance
the Duke of Hereward (or his ghost) sat among them.

With a half-suppressed cry, she recognized his form, seated in the
opposite corner of the church, from the spot he had last occupied.

"He shifts his place every time he appears," she said to herself.

And now, being determined that other eyes should see him as well as her
own, she touched the abbess' arm and whispered:

"Pray look before the priest enters. There is the Duke of Hereward (or
his ghost) sitting quite alone in the corner pew, on the left hand side
of the altar. Do you see him now?"

The abbess followed the direction with her eyes, and answered:

"No, I do not see any one there."

"Why, he is