ily became grave and thoughtful; for this conversation brought to her
recollection the dying moments of her beloved father, and she wished
once more to weep over the spot, where his remains were buried.
During the silence, which followed the abbess' speech, many minute
circumstances attending his last hours occurred to her--his emotion on
perceiving himself to be in the neighbourhood of Chateau-le-Blanc--his
request to be interred in a particular spot in the church of this
monastery--and the solemn charge he had delivered to her to destroy
certain papers, without examining them.--She recollected also the
mysterious and horrible words in those manuscripts, upon which her eye
had involuntarily glanced; and, though they now, and, indeed, whenever
she remembered them, revived an excess of painful curiosity, concerning
their full import, and the motives for her father's command, it was
ever her chief consolation, that she had strictly obeyed him in this
particular.

Little more was said by the abbess, who appeared too much affected by
the subject she had lately left, to be willing to converse, and her
companions had been for some time silent from the same cause, when this
general reverie was interrupted by the entrance of a stranger, Monsieur
Bonnac, who had just quitted the chamber of sister Agnes. He appeared
much disturbed, but Emily fancied, that his countenance had more the
expression of horror, than of grief. Having drawn the abbess to a
distant part of the room, he conversed with her for some time, during
which she seemed to listen with earnest attention, and he to speak
with caution, and a more than common degree of interest. When he had
concluded, he bowed silently to the rest of the company, and quitted the
room. The abbess, soon after, proposed going to the chamber of sister
Agnes, to which Emily consented, though not without some reluctance, and
Lady Blanche remained with the boarders below.

At the door of the chamber they met the confessor, whom, as he lifted
up his head on their approach, Emily observed to be the same that had
attended her dying father; but he passed on, without noticing her, and
they entered the apartment, where, on a mattress, was laid sister Agnes,
with one nun watching in the chair beside her. Her countenance was so
much changed, that Emily would scarcely have recollected her, had she
not been prepared to do so: it was ghastly, and overspread with gloomy
horror; her dim and hollow eyes we