mittance within the hallowed walls of conventual seclusion?" demanded Di Rinaldini.

"In every situation," sighed Isidore, Nature claims her prerogative: Hemelfride learnt from kindness, the strength of friendship; she guessed from the heart's vacuum, the energy of love."

"Sweet maid!" murmured Huberto, "what did not thy tender sensitive heart endure, in the threatened wreck of all its promised bliss, its rapturous anticipations?"

"Oh! she felt," eagerly resumed the youth, "all the mingled struggles of terror, agony, distraction: driven to the acme of despair, for nights her eyes closed not in rest. Her spirit subdued, her pride broken, even on her knees she deigned to supplicate mercy-but it was denied; the absolute power of her persecutors left nothing to hope, a respite of her fate was unsanctioned."

"Fiends! barbarous, relentless fiends!" exclaimed Di Rinaldini,

" All

"All this was for the love of God," pursued Isidore, "all this was the pure workings of immaculate faith: a soul unstained by sin was a rich sacrifice, which religion sanctioned, which bigotry offered up, a bribe to mercy."

"But your sister?" demanded Huberto; "'tis for your sister I feel interested. The coercion of monachal power, the erudite arguments of sectaries, the abstruse documents of science, must be the subject of future disquisition; 'tis Hemelfride alone claims my thoughts, 'tis of Hemelfride alone I would wish to hear."

"Hemelfride beheld every hope of her enlargement expire," resumed the pilgrim: "in vain she protested her vows were reluctant, were compulsatory; in vain her refractory spirit spurned the zealous ardour of her superior's persuasions; her arguments were nominated heretical, her reproaches profanation, and her perseverance obstinacy. The day, the hour, was fixed for her sacrifice, was fixed for her renunciation

renunciation of a world she had so often panted to behold.”

"And did it dawn on her within her prison walls?" interrogated Di Rinaldini; "or did the arduous enterprise precede-" "What enterprise ?" interrupted Isidore.

Fearing to repeat the question, lest again curiosity should wound the feelings of his guest, with a faint smile he concluded, as he led him from the corridor-" You have said Hemelfride is in safety, you have said Hemelfride is not professed."

CHMP.

CHAP. VI.

For something still there lies

In Heav'n's dark volume, which I read through mists.

Why is my pity all that I can give

To woe like hers?

DRYDIN.

Rowe.

ISIDORE, pacing his chamber, patiently awaited the signal of Vannina. The night was dark and cold; the wind howled around the turret, and agitated the curling waves of the Metremo, which lashed the walls beneath no star glittered in the darkened canopy of heaven; the moon, shrouded by clouds, lent not her rays, and the tall heads of the mountain-cypress waved in melancholy

choly cadence. Silent and sad, he folded his arms upon his bosom, as he mused upon the wrecked prospects of Di Rinaldini's hopes the tale which Vannina had disclosed, the dark hints which her suspicions had suggested, but, above all, the mysterious sounds, which she affirmed nought but supernatural agency to have produced, awakened wonder, and excited sympathy: "Alas!" sighed the pilgrim, "how slender is the tenure of mundane felicity! Adelheida, so loved, so fair, so excellent; Adelheida, so tenderly attached, so nobly disinterested; the once-worshipped wife of Di Rinaldini, the once-mighty heiress of Montranzo, now slumbers in the cold mausoleum of her ancestors, now fills with terror and dismay the coward hearts of her domestics!-Lost saint! injured and unfortunate being! not all thy mild virtues, not all thy known benevolence, not all thy Christian meekness, can check the weak coinage of superstition: ignorance and credulity swell the offspring of surmise;

and,