oman society of those times were, of course, tyrannical in the
extreme, and the average modern young lady would almost as willingly go
into a convent as submit to them. But Maria Teresa had received an
impression which nothing could efface. Her intuitive nature had divined
the possible semi-emancipation of marriage, and her temperament had felt
in a certain degree the extremes of joyous exaltation and of that
entrancing sadness which is love's premonition, and which tells maidens
what love is before they know him, by making them conscious of the
breadth and depth of his yet vacant dwelling.

She had learned in that brief time that she was beautiful, and she had
felt that she could love and that she should be loved in return. She had
seen the world as a princess and had felt it as a woman, and she had
understood all that she must give up in taking the veil. But she had
been offered no choice, and though she had contemplated opposition, she
had not dared to revolt. Being absolutely in the power of her parents,
so far as she was aware, she had accepted the fatality of their will,
and bent her fair head to be shorn of its glory and her broad forehead
to be covered forever from the gaze of men. And having submitted, she
had gone through it all bravely and proudly, as perhaps she would have
gone through other things, even to death itself, being a daughter of an
old race, accustomed to deify honour and to make its divinities of
tradition. For the rest of her natural life she was to live on the
memories of one short, magnificent year, forever to be contented with
the grim rigidity of conventual life in an ancient cloister surrounded
by gloomy mountains. She was to be a veiled shadow amongst veiled
shades, a priestess of sorrow amongst sad virgins; and though, if she
lived long enough, she was to be the chief of them and their ruler, her
very superiority could only make her desolation more complete, until her
own shadow, like the others, should be gathered into eternal darkness.

Sister Maria Addolorata had certain privileges for which her companions
would have given much, but which were traditionally the right of such
ladies of the Braccio family as took the veil. For instance, she had a
cell which, though not larger than the other cells, was better situated,
for it had a little balcony looking over the convent garden, and high
enough to afford a view of the distant valley and of the hills which
bounded it, beyond the garden wa