and had acquired some worldly fame, as well as much ecclesiastical dignity, in the course of his long life. It must be delightful, the nuns thought, to be his own sister, to receive long visits from him, and to hear all he had to say about the busy world of Rome. To most of them everything beyond Rome was outer darkness. But though the nuns envied the abbess and Maria Addolorata, they did not venture to say so, and they hardly dared to think so, even when they were all alone, each in her cell; for, in the absence of anything really sinful, the concentration of conventual life magnifies small spiritual sins, and to admit that she even faintly wishes she might be some one else is to tarnish the brightness of the nun's scrupulously polished conscience. It would be as great a misdeed, perhaps, as to allow the attention to wander to worldly matters during times of especial devotion. Nevertheless, the envy showed itself very perceptibly, and much against the will of the sisters themselves, in a certain cold deference of manner toward the young and beautiful nun who was one day to be the superior of them all by force of circumstances for which she deserved no credit. She had the position among them, and something of the isolation, of a young royal princess among the ladies of her queen mother's court. There was about her, too, an undefinable something, like the shadow of future fate—a something almost impossible to describe, and yet distinctly appreciable to all who saw her and lived with her. It came upon her especially when she was silent and abstracted, when she was kneeling in her place in the choir, or was alone upon her little balcony over the garden. At such times a luminous pallor gradually took the place of her fresh and healthy complexion, her eyes grew unnaturally dark, with a deep, fixed fire in them, and the regular features took upon them the white, set straightness of a death-mask. Sometimes, at such moments, a shiver ran through her, even in summer, and she drew her breath sharply once or twice, as though she were hurt. The expression was not one of suffering or pain, but was rather that of a person conscious of some great danger which must be met without fear or flinching. She would have found it very hard to explain what she felt just then. She might have said that it was a consciousness of something unknown. She could not have said more than that. It brought no vision with it, beatific or horrifying; it was not the consequence of methodical contemplation, as the trance state is; and it was followed by no reaction or sense of uneasiness. It simply came and went as the dark shadow of a thunder-storm passing be tween her and the sun, and leaving no trace behind. There was nothing to account for it, unless it could be explained by heredity, and no one had ever suggested any such explanation to Maria. It was true that there had been more than one tragedy in the Braccio family since they had first lifted their heads above the level of their contemporaries to become Roman barons, in the old days before such titles as prince and duke had come into use. But, then, most of the old families could tell of deeds as cruel, and lives as passionate, as any remembered by Maria's race; and Italians, though superstitious in unexpected ways, have little of that belief in hereditary fate which is common enough in the gloomy North. "Was Sister Maria Addolorata a great sinner before she became a nun?" asked Annetta, Sora Nanna's daughter, of her mother, one day, as they came away from the convent. "What are you saying?" exclaimed the washerwoman in a tone of rebuke. "She is a great lady, and the niece of the abbess and of the cardinal. Sometimes certain ideas pass through your head, my daughter." And Sora Nanna gesticulated, unable to express herself. "Then she sins in her throat," observed Annetta, calmly. "But you do not even look at her-so many sheets-so many pillowcases- and good day! But while you count, I look." "Why should I look at her?" inquired Nanna, shifting the big empty basket she carried on her head, hitching her broad shoulders, and wrinkling her leathery forehead, as her small eyes turned upward. "Do you take me for a man that I should make eyes at a nun ?” "And I? Am I a man? And yet I look at her. I see nothing but her face when we are there, and afterward I think about it. What harm is there? She sins in her throat. I know it." Sora Nanna hitched her shoulders impatiently again, and said nothing. The two women descended through the steep and narrow street, slippery and wet with slimy, coal-black mud, that glittered on the rough cobblestones. Nanna walked first, and Annetta followed close behind her, keeping step, and setting her feet exactly where her mother had trod, with the instinctive certainty of the born mountaineer. With heads erect and shoulders square, each with one hand on her hip and the other hanging down, they carried their burdens swiftly and safely, with a swinging, undulating gait, as though it were a pleasure to them to move, and would require an effort to stop rather than to walk on forever. They wore shoes because they were well-to-do people, and chose to show that they were when they went up to the convent. But for the rest, they were clad in the costume of the neighborhood - the coarse white shift, close at the throat; the scarlet bodice; the short, dark, gathered skirt; and the dark-blue carpet apron, with flowers woven on a white stripe across the lower end. Both wore heavy gold earrings, and Sora Nanna had eight or ten strings of large coral beads around her throat. Annetta was barely fifteen years old, brown, slim, and active as a lizard. She was one of those utterly unruly and untamable girls of whom there are two or three in every Italian village, in mountain or plain, a creature in whom a living consciousness of living nature took the place of thought, and with whom to be conscious was to speak, without reason or hesitation. The small, keen, black eyes were set under immense and arched black eyebrows, which made the eyes themselves seem larger than they were, and the projecting temples cast shadows to the cheek which hid the rudimentary modeling of the coarse lower lids. The ears were flat and ill-developed, but close to the head and not large; the teeth were short, though perfectly regular and exceedingly white; the lips, long, mobile, brown rather than red, and generally parted like those of a wild animal. The girl's smoothly sinewy throat moved with every step, showing the quick play of the elastic cords and muscles. Her blueblack hair was plaited, though far from neatly, and the braids were twisted into an irregular flat coil, generally hidden by the flap of the white embroidered cloth cross-folded upon her head and hanging down behind. For some minutes the mother and daughter continued to pick their way down the winding lanes between the dark houses of the upper village. Then Sora Nanna put out her right hand as a signal to Annetta that she meant to stop, and she stood still on the steep descent, and turned deliberately till she could see the girl. What are you saying?" she began, as though there had been no pause in the conversation-"that Sister Maria Addolorata sins in her throat! But how can she sin in her throat since she sees no man but the gardener and the priest? Indeed, you say foolish things!" "And what has that to do with it?" inquired Annetta. "She must have seen enough of men in Rome, every one of them a great lord. And who tells you that she did not love one of them, and does not wish that she were married to him? And if that is not a sin in the throat, I do not know what to say. There is my answer." You say foolish things," repeated Sora Nanna. Then she turned deliberately away, and began to descend once more, with an occasional dissatisfied movement of the shoulders. "For the rest," observed Annetta, "it is not my business. I would rather look at the Englishman when he is eating meat than at Sister Maria when she is counting clothes. I do not know whether he is a wolf or a man." "Eh! The Englishman!" exclaimed Sora Nanna. "You will look so much at the Englishman that you will make blood with Gigetto, who wishes you well, and when Gigetto has waited for the Englishman at the corner of the forest, what shall we all have? The galleys. What do you see in the Englishman? He has red hair and long, long teeth. Yes — just like a wolf. You are right. And if he pays for meat, why should he not eat it? If he did not pay, it would be different. It would soon be finished. Heaven send us a little money without any Englishman! Besides, Gigetto said the other day that he would wait for him at the corner of the forest. And Gigetto, when he says a thing, he does it." "And why should we go to the galleys if Gigetto waits for the Englishman?" inquired Annetta. "Silly!" cried the older woman. "Because Gigetto would take your father's gun, since he has none of his own. That would be enough. We should have done it." Annetta shrugged her shoulders, and said nothing. "But take care," continued Sora Nanna. "Your father sleeps with one eye open. He sees you, and he sees also the Englishman every day. He says nothing because he is good. But he has a fist like a paving-stone. I tell you nothing more." They reached Sora Nanna's house, and dis. appeared under the dark archway. For Sora Nanna and Stefanone, her husband, were rich people for their station, and their house was large, and was built with an arch wide enough and high enough for a loaded beast of burden to pass through with a man on its back. And, within, everything was clean and well kept, excepting all that belonged to Annetta. There were airy upper rooms, with well-swept floors of red brick or of beaten cement, furnished with high beds on iron trestles, and wooden stools of well-worn brown oak, and tables painted a vivid green, and primitive lithographs of Saint Benedict and Saint Scholastica and the Addolorata. And there were lofts in which the rich autumn grapes were hung up to dry on strings, and where chestnuts lay in heaps, and figs were spread in symmetrical order on great sheets of the coarse gray paper made in Subiaco. There were apples, too, though poor ones, and there were bins of maize 36 and wheat, waiting to be picked over before being ground in the primeval household mill. And there were hams, and sides of bacon, and red peppers, and bundles of dried herbs, and great mountain cheeses on shelves. There was also a guest-room, better than the rest, which Stefanone and his wife occasionally let to respectable travelers, or to the merchants who came from Rome on business to stay a few days in Subiaco. At the present time the room was rented by the Englishman concerning whom the discussion had arisen between Annetta and her mother. Angus Dalrymple, M. D., was not an Englishman, as he had tried to explain to Sora Nanna, though without the least success. He was, as his name proclaimed, a Scotchman of the Scotch, and a doctor of medicine. It was true that he had red hair, and an abundance of it, and long white teeth, but Sora Nanna's description was otherwise libellously incomplete, and wholly omitted all mention of the good points in his appearance. In the first place, he possessed the characteristic national build in a superior degree of development, with all the lean, bony energy which has done so much hard work in the world. He was broadshouldered, long-armed, long-legged, deepchested, and straight, with sinewy hands, and singularly well-shaped fingers. His healthy skin had that mottled look produced by countless freckles upon an almost childlike complexion. The large, grave mouth generally concealed the long teeth objected to by Sora Nanna, and the lips, though even and narrow, were strong rather than thin, and their rare smile was genial and as yet very faint – gentle. There were lines about the corners of the mouth, which told of a nervous and passionate disposition, and of the strong Scotch temper, as well as of a certain sensitiveness which belongs especially to Northern races. The pale but very bright blue eyes, under shaggy, auburn brows, were fiery with courage, and keen with shrewd enterprise. Dalrymple was assuredly not a man to be despised under any circumstances — intellectually or physically. His presence in such a place as Subiaco, at a time when hardly any foreigners, except painters, visited the place, requires some explanation; for he was not an artist, but a doctor, and had never even been tempted to amuse himself with sketching. In the first place, he was a younger son of a good family, and received a moderate allowance, quite sufficient in those days to allow him considerable latitude of expenditure in old-fashioned Italy. Secondly, he had entirely refused to follow any of the professions known as "liberal." He had no taste for the law, and he had not the companionable character which alone can make life in the army pleasant in time of peace. His beliefs, While still a student he had once made a tour The only object of this short digression has been to show that Angus Dalrymple was not a careless idler and tourist in Italy, only half responsible for what he did, and not at all for what he thought. On the contrary, he was a man of very unusual gifts, of superior education, and of rare enterprise; a strong, silent, thoughtful man, about eight-and-twenty years of age, and just beginning to feel his power as something greater than he had suspected, when he came to spend the autumn months in Subiaco, and hired Sora Nanna's guest-room, with a little room leading off it which he kept locked, and in which he had a table, a chair, a microscope, some books, a few chemicals, and some simple apparatus. His presence had at first roused certain jealous misgivings in the heart of the town physi cian, Sor Tommaso Taddei, commonly spoken of simply as "the doctor," because there was. no other. But Dalrymple was not without tact and knowledge of human nature. He explained that he came as a foreigner to learn from native physicians how malarious fevers were treated in Italy; and he listened with patient intelligence to Sor Tommaso's antiquated theories, and silently watched his still more antiquated practice. And Sor Tommaso, like all people who think that they know a vast deal, highly approved of Dalrymple's submissive silence, and said that the young man was a marvel of modesty, and that if he could stay about ten years in Subiaco, and learn something from Sor Tommaso himself, he might really some day be a fairly good doctor - which were extraordinarily liberal admissions on the part of the old practitioner, and contributed largely toward reassuring Stefanone concerning his lodger's character. For Stefanone and his wife had their doubts and suspicions. Of course they knew that all foreigners, except Frenchmen and Austrians, were Protestants, and ate meat on fast-days, and were under the most especial protection of the devil, who fattened them in this world that they might burn the better in the next. But Stefanone had never seen the real foreigner at close quarters, and had not conceived it possible that any living human being could deyour so much half-cooked flesh in a day as Dalrymple desired for his daily portion, paid for, and consumed. Moreover, there was no man in Subiaco who could, and did, swallow such portentous draughts of the strong mountain wine without suffering any apparent effects from his potations. Furthermore, also, Dalrymple did strange things by day and night in the small laboratory he had arranged next to his bedroom, and unholy and evil smells issued at times through the cracks of the door, and penetrated from the bedroom to the stairs outside, and were distinctly perceptible all over the house. Therefore Stefanone maintained, for a long time, that his lodger was in league with the powers of darkness, and that it was not safe to keep him in the house, though he paid his bill regularly every Saturday, and never quarreled about the price of his food and drink. On the whole, however, Stefanone abstained from interfering, as he had at first been inclined to do, and from entering the laboratory, with the support of the parish priest, a basin of holy water, and a loaded gunall three of which he considered necessary to an exorcism; and little by little Sor Tommaso, the doctor, persuaded him that Dalrymple was a worthy young man, deeply engaged in profound studies, and should be respected rather than exorcised. SISTER MARIA ADDOLORATA sat by the open door of her cell, looking across the stone parapet of her little balcony, and watching the changing richness of the western sky, as the sun went down far out of sight behind the mountains. Though the month was October, the afternoon was warm; it was very still, and the air had been close in the choir during the benediction service, which was just over. She leaned back in her chair, and her lips parted as she breathed, with a perceptible desire for refreshment in the breath. She held a piece of needlework in her heavy white hands; the needle had been thrust through the linen, but the stitch had remained unfinished, and one pointed finger pressed the doubled edge against the other, lest the material should slip before she made up her mind to draw through. Deep in the garden, under the balcony, the late flowers were taking strangely vivid colors out of the bright sky above, and some bits of broken glass, stuck in the mortar on the top of the opposite wall as a protection against thieving boys, glowed like a line of rough rubies against the misty distance. Even the white walls of the bare cell, and the coarse gray blanket lying across the foot of the small bed, drank in a little of the color, and looked less gray and less grim. From the eaves, high up above the open door, the swallows shot down into the golden light, striking great circles, and reflecting the red gold of the sky from their breasts as they wheeled just beyond the wall, with steady wings wide-stretched, up and down; and each one, turning at full speed, struck upward again, and was out of sight in an instant, above the lintel. The nun watched them, her eyes trying to follow each of them in turn, and to recognize them separately as they flashed into sight again and again. Her lips were parted, and as she sat there she began to sing very softly and quite unconsciously. She could not have told what the song was. The words were strange and oddly divided, and there was a deadly sadness in a certain interval that came back almost with every stave. But the voice itself was beautiful beyond all comparison with ordinary voices, full of deep and touching vibrations and far harmonics, though she sang so softly, all to herself. Notes like hers haunt the ears-and sometimes the heart when she who sang them has been long dead, and many would give much to hear but a breath of them again. It was hard for Maria Addolorata not to sing sometimes, when she was all alone in her cell, though it was so strictly forbidden. Singing is a gift of expression, when it is a really natural gift, as much as speech and gesture and the smile on the lips, with the one difference that it is a keener pleasure to him or to her that sings than gesture or speech can possibly be. Music, and especially singing, is a physical as well as an intellectual expression, a pleasure of the body as well as a "delectation" of the soul. To sing naturally and spontaneously is most generally an endowment of natures physically strong and rich by the senses, independently of the mind, though melody may sometimes be the audible translation of a silent thought as well as the unconscious speech of wordless passion. And in Maria's song there was a strain of that unknown and fatal something which the nuns sometimes saw in her face, and which was in her eyes now, as she sang; for they no longer followed the circling of the swallows, but grew fixed and dark, with fiery reflections from the sunset sky, and the regular features grew white and straight and square against the deepening shadows within the narrow room. The deep voice trembled a little, and the shoulders had a short, shivering movement under the heavy folds of the dark veil, as the sensation of a presence ran through her and made her shudder. But the voice did not break, and she sang on louder, now, than she realized, the full notes swelling in her throat, and vibrating between the narrow walls, and floating out through the open door to join the flight of the swallows. The door of the cell opened gently, but she did not hear, and sang on, leaning back in her chair, and gazing still at the pink clouds above the mountains. ing half round toward her superior, with sud.denly downcast eyes. The elder lady came forward with slow dignity, and walked as far as the door of the balcony, where she stood still for a moment, gazing at the beautiful sky. She was not a stately woman, for she was too short and stout, but she had that calm air of assured superiority which takes the place of stateliness, and which seems to belong especially to those who occupy important positions in the Church. Her large features, though too heavy, were imposing in their excessive pallor, while the broad, dark-brown shadows all around and beneath the large black eyes gave the face a depth of expression which did not, perhaps, wholly correspond with the original character. It was a striking face, and considering the wide interval between the ages of the abbess and her niece, and the natural difference in coloring, there was a strong family resemblance between the two women. The abbess sat down upon the only chair, and Maria remained standing before her, her sewing in her hands. "I have often told you that you must not sing in your cell," said the abbess, in a coldly severe tone. Maria's shoulders shook her veil a little, but she still looked at the floor. "I cannot help it," she answered in a constrained voice. "I did not know that I was singing-" "That is ridiculous! How can one sing, and not know it? You are not deaf. At least, you do not sing as though you were. I will not have it. I could hear you as far away as my own room-a love-song, too!" "The love of death," suggested Maria. "It makes no difference," answered the elder lady. "You disturb the peace of the sisters with your singing. You know the rule, and you must obey it like the rest. If you must sing, then sing in church." "I do." Very well, that ought to be enough. Must you sing all the time? Suppose that the cardinal had been visiting me, as was quite possible, what impression would he have had of our discipline?" "Oh, Uncle Cardinal has often heard me sing." "You must not call him' Uncle Cardinal!’ It is like the common people who say Uncle Priest.' I have told you that a hundred times, at least. And if the cardinal has heard you singing, so much the worse." "He once told me that I had a good voice,” observed Maria, still standing before her aunt. "A good voice is a gift of God, and to be used in church, but not in such a way as to attract attention or admiration. The devil is |