character so active in doing good had diffused around it. It brought
vividly before Graham that image of perfect spotless womanhood. And a
voice within him asked, "Would that cenotaph be placed amid the monuments
of an illustrious lineage if the secret known to thee could transpire?
What though the lost one were really as unsullied by sin as the world
deems, would the name now treasured as an heirloom not be a memory of
gall and a sound of shame?"

He remained so silent after putting down the inscription, that the Duke
said modestly: "My dear Graham, I see that you do not like what I have
written. Your pen is much more practised than mine. If I did not ask
you to compose the epitaph, it was because I thought it would please you
more in coming, as a spontaneous tribute due to her, from the
representative of her family. But will you correct my sketch, or give me
another according to your own ideas?"

"I see not a word to alter," said Graham; "forgive me if my silence
wronged my emotion; the truest eloquence is that which holds us too mute
for applause."

"I knew you would like it. Leopold is always so disposed to underrate
himself," said the duchess, whose hand was resting fondly on her
husband's shoulder. "Epitaphs are so difficult to write-especially
epitaphs on women of whom in life the least said the better. Janet was
the only woman I ever knew whom one could praise in safety."

"Well expressed," said the Duke, smiling: "and I wish you would make that
safety clear to some lady friends of yours, to whom it might serve as a
lesson. Proof against every breath of scandal herself, Janet King never
uttered and never encouraged one ill-natured word against another. But I