ate that _she_ is the girl whom you overheard
talking with the young Duke of Hereward at midnight, under your balcony,
on the night before the murder of Sir Lemuel Levison?"

"She is the very same woman, as he is the very same man, who _planned_,
if they did not perpetrate the robbery--who _caused_, if they did not
commit, the murder; and their names are John Scott, Duke of Hereward, and
Rose Cameron."

"My daughter, in regard to the girl you may be quite right; but in
respect to the man you are utterly wrong."

"Should I not know my own betrothed husband?" demanded Salome,
impatiently.

"Should _I_ not know _mine_?" inquired the abbess, very
patiently.

Salome made a gesture of desperate perplexity, and then there was a
silent pause, during which the two women sat gazing in each other's faces
in silent wonder.

Suddenly Salome started up in wild excitement and began pacing the narrow
cell with rapid steps, exclaiming:

"There have been strange cases of counterparts in persons of this world
so exact as to have deceived the eyes of their most intimate friends. If
this should be a case in point! Great Heaven, if it should! If this
Count Waldemar de Volaski should be such a perfect counterpart of the
Duke of Hereward as to have deceived even my eyes and ears! Oh, what joy!
Oh, what rapture! What ecstacy to find 'the princely Hereward' as
stainless in honor as he is noble in name; and this most unprincipled
Volaski the real guilty party! But--the marriage certificate in
Hereward's own name! The letters to his so-called 'wife,' Rose Cameron,
in Hereward's own handwriting! Ah, no! there is no hope! not the faintest
beam of hope! And yet--"

She suddenly paused in her wild walk, and looked toward the abbess.

That lady was still sitting on the stool, at the foot of the cot, with
her hands folded on her lap, and her eyes cast down upon them as in deep
thought or prayer.

Salome sat down beside her, and inquired in a low tone:

"Mother Genevieve, was the Count Waldemar de Volaski ever in Scotland?
Has he been there within the last twelve months?"

The lady lifted her eyes to the face of the inquirer, and slowly replied:

"My daughter, how should I know? Have I not said that, until this day,
when I have seen him in the flesh standing in this room, I had believed
him to have been in purgatory for twenty-five years or more?"

"True! true!" sighed Salome.

The abbess folded her hands, cast down her eyes, and resum