funeral chant, and that deafening bell, were but too fairly calculated
to inspire the souls of the innocent Flora and the guilty Giulia with
the wildest apprehension!

Suddenly the door opened, and Sister Alba, who presided over the chamber
of penitence, appeared on the threshold.

"Come forth, daughters!" she exclaimed; "and behold the punishment due
to female frailty."

The Countess of Arestino and Flora Francatelli mechanically obeyed this
command; and a strange--a heart-rending sight met their eyes.

The chamber of penitence was filled with nuns in their convent-garbs;
and the penitents in a state of semi-nudity. On one side of the
apartment, a huge door with massive bolts and chains stood open,
allowing a glimpse, by the glare of the lamps, tapers, and torches, of
the interior of a small cell that looked like a sepulcher. Near the
entrance to that tomb, for such, indeed, it was--stood the lady abbess:
and on the pavement near her knelt a young and beautiful girl, with
hands clasped and countenance raised in an agony of soul which no human
pen can describe. The garments of this hapless being had been torn away
from her neck and shoulders, doubtless by the force used to drag her
thither: and her suppliant attitude, the despair that was depicted by
her appearance, her extreme loveliness, and the wild glaring of her deep
blue eyes, gave her the appearance of something unearthly in the glare
of that vacillating light.

"No, daughter," said the abbess, in a cold, stern voice; "there is no
mercy for you on earth."

Then echoed through the chamber of penitence a scream, a shriek so wild,
so long, so full of agony, that it penetrated to the hearts of Flora,
the countess, and some of the penitents, although the abbess and her
nuns seemed unmoved by that appalling evidence of female anguish. At the
same instant the bell struck again; and the funeral hymn was recommenced
by the junior recluses.

Sister Alba now approached Flora and the countess, and said in a low
whisper, "The vengeance of the conventual discipline is terrible on
those who sin! That miserable girl completed her novitiate five months
ago; and the night before she was to take the veil she escaped. This
awful crime she committed for the sake of some man she had known ere she
first entered the convent, and for whom she thus endangered her immortal
soul. But her justly incensed relations yesterday discovered her
retreat; and she was restored to this house o