"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?"