obligation. Now, she must stand up and be ashamed before the whole
world. There would be a horrible publicity about it. She was too high
born not to feel that all the world in which she should ever move was as
one great family. Dalrymple might promise her honour and respect, and
the affection of his own father and mother for the love of her parents,
a home, respected wifehood, and all the rest. With his strength, he
might impose her upon his family, and they might treat her as he should
dictate, for he was a strong and dominant man. But in their hearts,
Protestants, English people, foreigners as they were to her race, even
they could not tell themselves honestly that it was not a shameful thing
to break such vows as hers, shameful and nothing less. And if, for a
moment, he were not there to hold them in his check, she should see it
in their faces, and she must hang her head, for she could have nothing
to answer. For him, she must not only sacrifice her soul, wrench out her
faith, break her promise to God, and her vows to the Church. She must
give herself to public, earthly shame, for his sake.

It was too much. She could bear anything but that. Rather than endure
that, it was better to die.

The black clouds rose higher in the west, and the gloomy air blew upon
her face. Her head was no longer hot, for a chilly horror had come upon
her, like the shadow of something unspeakably awful, close at hand.
Suddenly, she was afraid to be alone. A bat, lured by the second
twilight of the moon's rising, whirled down from above, with softly
flapping wings, and almost brushed her face. She drew back quickly into
the doorway. It was a very tragic night, she thought. She shut the door,
and groped her way out beyond her cell to the corridor, dimly
illuminated by a single light hanging from the vault by a running cord.
She entered the abbess's apartment. One of the sisters had taken her
place, but Maria Addolorata sent her away by a gesture, and sat down by
the bedside.

The old lady was either asleep, or did not notice her niece's coming.
Her face was grey as ashes, and upturned in the shadow. Upon the stone
floor stood the primitive Italian night-light, a wick supported in a
triangular bit of tin by three little corks in oil floating on water in
a tumbler. The light was very clear and steady, though there was little
of it, and to Maria, who had been long in comparative darkness, the room
seemed bright enough. There was little furnit