It took a long time to finish a small amount of packing. Her mind was so distracted by reasoning with herself that the effort to remember such practical necessities as brushes, shoes, rubbers, was conscious and wearisome. When the gong sounded for breakfast, the tray of the trunk was still incomplete. She made a hasty toilet, and, as she turned from her mirror, wondering a little at the pallor of her own face, some one knocked upon the door, and before she answered the summons her father came smiling into the room. He looked at the trunk with some surprise. "You're not going away?" he began. "Only for a short time. I made up my mind suddenly. I meant to tell you last night, but you were out for dinner, you remember.' "Where are you going?" "To uncle and aunt." "Are they ill?” "No." "Then why do you go?" "I think I ought." "You're just like your mother," he said, with an unpleasant little laugh. "Always doing the doleful thing for conscience's sake. Suppose I don't want you to go? I've got good news for you. You can't guess what it is." His naturally jubilant spirit began to reassert itself. "Terrapin for dinner?" she guessed, making an effort to enter into his mood. "Have you found a cook who can actually cook terrapin?" "Now you are frivolous," said the Senator, with affected sternness. "I'm in dead earnest. What is the most desirable thing that could happen to you— the most desirable?" The expression on his face was so strange and eager that she grew serious at once, and, in the morbidness of her mood, she spoke on impulse. "Death," she said, then stopped short, feeling half ashamed. "Right," said the Senator, seating himself easily on the wide window sill. "The possibility of Jim Hollins' death has been before both our minds too long not to be able to jump at that conclusion." She looked at him with wide-staring eyes. "You mean that my-husband is dead?" she said. "Yes; there can be no doubt about it now. Dead and buried two weeks ago. There are the papers to prove it-doctor's certificate says consumption. Damp cell-poor fare-I suppose. Hollins, who had lived on the fat of the land, couldn't stand the change forever. Never was a more timely end-term would have expired this fall. I saw his death. announced in a German paper-got a friend of mine to verify it. Thought I wouldn't raise your hopes until I was certain. Now you can begin life over again no scruples to hang to." She sank weakly down upon the bed and looked toward him with unseeing eyes, and then she buried her face in her hands. "Oh, I didn't mean that," she said. "Mean what?" "That I wanted him to die." "Oh, because because he is dead." He laughed again, this time goodnaturedly. "Then we won't mention the fact at all, though no mortal woman, under the circumstances, could help rejoicing over the fact that she is free." "Free?" She repeated the word questioningly, as if she was asking herself all that it meant to her. She was too dazed to comprehend her liberty. Her only feeling was one of shamed vexation that her father should rejoice, and presuppose her joy, in the death of any one-death that, in its inevitableness, forces respect, wrests solemnity from all. "I wish you wouldn't go away now," her father went on. "I want to give a dinner the first of next week, and I want you to preside. It will be very inconvenient." She heard him with a certain mute surprise. How could he pass from tragedy to trivialities? Could he not give her a moment's interim of comprehension? She wanted to cry out to him for sympathy, for the love that he had unconsciously denied her. The old dread feeling of loneliness returned to her. There had been no one to bear the burden of her shame-there was no one now to understand. The shock seemed to quicken, momentarily, the old love into life. Her forebodings about Caworth receded, and she wondered why she had felt the necessity for going away. Her life was over. She was flying from spectres-spectres of sin. Her father grew impatient at her silence. "Is there any reason for your going?" She put her hand to her head with a bewildered gesture. "No," she said, like one slowly wakening, "no, there is no reason now." "I don't like to interfere with any of your plans," he continued, with that boyish plea for appreciation, "but a man needs a woman's help in society—I'm such a blundering fool when it comes to rules of etiquette. Now, let's go to breakfast." He chatted gaily all during the simple meal about his own affairs. He carefully refrained from alluding to her husband, but she felt that the buoyancy of his mood sprang from the news he had received from Berlin, and she, with a woman's inconsistent remorselessness, blamed him for this gladness. While he talked she listened inertly, making a pitiful pretense of breakfasting. When he turned to his morning paper she breathed a sigh of relief, and, getting up from the table, she went to her room, and there flung herself upon her bed with one desire to cry, as she had so often cried when a child, when there was no one to understand. But she lay there for hours, and no tears came to her relief. She was not grieving for her husband. he had passed out of her life so long before but she felt an infinite pity for him, a pity that submerged the old feeling of outrage at his deceit. Her wedding vows taunted her conscience. What should she have done? How should she have acted? Was her place in Berlin outside the prison bars? Had her mission lain so close that she should have shared his shame, or had she acted rightly in accepting the burden of his debt, and going where restitution was possible? Oh, she had been so young, so pitifully young, when these doubts first assailed her and her grandfather had decided matters for her by taking her far away, and now all her misgivings were useless. Her husband was dead-dead. With the mind of a woman, grown old beyond her years, she viewed him compassionately as a sanguine, reckless boy, forgetting that his years had kept pace with hers. The maid came in to straighten up the room, but when she saw the prostrate figure on the bed, she retreated, with the rare intuition of a French maid who has witnessed many boudoir tragedies. It was twelve o'clock when Corinne came. She was bubbling over with the great news of her engagement, and she wanted Marian to rejoice with her in her happiness. She ran upstairs, as was her custom, and knocked upon the door. There was no response; then, following out a schoolgirl habit, she turned the knob and peeped in. Marian looked up and smiled wanly. "Oh, Corinne," she said, opening wide her arms, "come to me, Corinne; I want to feel that I am not alone." Frightened by this welcome, Corinne threw herself on her knees beside her friend. "Tell me, Marian, tell me what has happened." Her own joy was lost in the real distress for her friend. "My husband-he is dead," she said, simply. "Your husband!" Marian went on: "It is such a long story, Corinne, and my head aches. I was married long ago, when I was younger than you are. I should have told you before-I should have told every one, but I was ashamed. He stole, Corinne he stole, and was put in prison. He died there. I should not have left him to die all alone. He was my husband. I have not done right, Corinne I have not done right. He was my husband. We were married in a little chapel-I've forgotten the name. I've tried so hard to forget. He stole so many thousands of dollars. You must not tell any one, Corinne—I'm going to try and pay it back-you must not tell any one." She seemed to suddenly realize that she had said too much, for she sat up and caught Corinne's hands in both her own. "You must not tell," she said. "I hardly knew what I was saying. You must not tell." Corinne's face showed real alarm. "You have a fever, Marian; I'm sure you have a fever." "No, I'm better now. I had to talk to some one. You Catholics would go to confession, and I suppose it would be a relief. I have not done right. You see, I took back my maiden name, when all the time I was a married woman." She felt the girl in her arms give an involuntary start. involuntary start. Corinne's great love had quickened every perception. All night she had lain awake wondering who the "other woman" might be, and now a sudden suspicion loomed large, and dwarfed her sympathy. "And no one knew?" she said. "No, no one guessed. It was so long. ago.' "But if some one had loved you, you would have had to tell?" Marian was thinking only of Caworth. "Yes, if some one had loved me, I would have had to tell." "Oh, I see," Corinne said. "God pity me now. I see," and, escaping from her friend's clasp, she hurried, whitelipped, from the room. (To be continued.) A Sweeter Harp By Rev. T. L. Crowley, O. P. When David's hand swept o'er the harp there sprang But I, upon a sweeter harp, awake A heav'nlier flood of melody. The beads. In ecstacies of golden sound, break Upon the air. My soul the Saviour's deeds T In Perugino's City By MARY F. NIXON-ROULET THERE is no Perugia of to-day. From the first glimpse one has of the walled Etruscan city across the gray-green of the olive-hued landscape, battlemented against the Umbrian sky, creeping up its hillsides like some great monster, the city is medieval. It is a bit of history left unchanged by all the vicissitudes of stones, are as the Baglione and the Oddi built them. The streets-stair-steps in many places, ending abruptly in a cul de sac-go up or down according as the hillside determines and, with their archways, form vistas of a landscape equalled nowhere in Italy. From the rugged grandeur of the Porta Augusta, splendid monument of Roman rule, with its dark magnificence, its plain lettering, its stone bucklers, and the fortress gate of the Bersaglieri, with its bastions and buttressed wall, the Perugian streets are a network of surprises. Murder, rapine, ill deeds, haunted these dark alleys and sunless corners, and' the very stones cry out all the horrors of history. No city of all the fearsome Middle Ages was ever so rent and torn with strife as was this hillside town, with its strange contrasts. "The mountains rise in noble lines, chain behind chain," writes a traveller, "until their farthest peaks melt into the clouds, hiding their purple under snowy copes. Over the vivid patches of young wheat the olives cast their shadows, like trails of incense. Sheltered clefts in the hillside are purpled with violets and anemonies, and, like the blossoming rod of St. Joseph, the bare branches of the almond trees bend under their weight of rosy snow. The sun, struggling through vapor, shines, a pale lalo, over this land of saints, -No modern rebuilding mars its or a light wind arises, driving the quaintness, and its old houses, in their mist before it, tearing it into time-softened hues of diverse colored long transparent veils fit for Ma PERUGINO fortune, and it is a mass of picturesque vistas of to-day's beauties and reminiscent scenes of past glories. vines, where shining spots in the landscape are historic cities and the glistening ribbon that bends along the southern plain is the Tiber, winding down to Rome." Dark and silent as are many of the quaint old streets of Perugia, gliding under archways, jutting out from the ragged remnants of the city's wall, overgrown with moss and climbing vines; or, turning some sharp corner up steep steps beneath swinging wrought-iron lanterns, gray with age, the life of the city is gay and bright. Perugian women are charming. There is in even the simplest of them a graceful dignity very pleasing and a manner of gentle friendliness quite akin to the calm beauty of their large, serene eyes, eyes which Perugino loved to paint in his Madonnas. In the market-place one hears gaiety and mirth, and at its booths one smiles in sympathy as bargains are made vout and take their religion as seriously as they take their pleasures gaily. It is an imposing pile, this Cathedral of San Lorenzo, still unfinished, yet fine enough sarcophagus to contain the remains of three of the Popes, Innocent II, Urban IV and Martin IV. In its library is preserved the precious Codex of St. Luke, gold on a purple ground, a magnificent specimen of illustrating. At the outside of the Duomo stretches the Piazza del Papa, so named from the bronze statue of Pope Julius III, by Vicenzio Danti, dating from 1556. Upon the cathedral steps it stands, calmly extending a hand in papal benediction over all the strife and tumult and rancor of this troubled town. And what a hotbed of strife it has been since the wars between Octavius and Anthony (41 B. C.)! Destroyed by the Goths in the sixth century, rent in twain by Guelph and Ghibelline in the Lom |