addressing the poor girl in a reproachful tone, exclaimed, "Oh!
wicked--worldly-minded creature, repent--repent--repent!"

There was something so awful--so appalling--in this strange conduct on
the part of the nuns, that Flora began to doubt whether she were not
laboring under some terrible delusion. She feared lest her senses were
leaving her: and, covering her face with her hands, so as to close her
eyes against external objects, she endeavored to look inward, as it
were, and scrutinize her own soul.

But she was not allowed time to reflect; for the three nuns seized upon
her, the foremost saying, "You must come with us!"

"Mercy! mercy!" screamed the wretched girl, vainly struggling in the
powerful grasp of the recluses.

Her long hair, which she had unbraided before she was carried off from
the Riverola mansion, floated over her shoulders, and enhanced the
expression of ineffable despair which her pallid countenance now wore.

Wildly she glanced around, as she was being hurried from the room; and
frantic screams escaped her lips. But there was no one nigh to
succor--no one to melt at the outbursts of her anguish!

The three nuns dragged, rather than conducted her to an adjacent
apartment, which was lighted by a lamp of astonishing brilliancy, and
hung in a skylight raised above the roof.

On the floor, immediately beneath this lamp, stood an armchair of
wicker-work; and from this chair two stout cords ascended to the
ceiling, through which they passed by means of two holes perforated for
the purpose.

When Flora was dragged by the nuns to the immediate vicinity of the
chair, which her excited imagination instantly converted into an engine
of torture, that part of the floor on which the chair stood seemed to
tremble and oscillate beneath her feet, as if it were a trap-door.

The most dreadful sensations now came over her: she felt as if her brain
was reeling--as if she must go mad.

A fearful scream burst from her lips, and she struggled with the energy
of desperation, as the nuns endeavored to thrust her into the chair.

"No--no!" she exclaimed, frantically; "you shall not torture me--you
dare not murder me! What have I done to merit this treatment! Mercy!
mercy!"

But her cries and her struggles were alike useless; for she was now
firmly bound to the chair, into which the nuns had forced her to seat
herself.

Then commenced the maddening scene which will be found in the ensuing
chapter.

CH