nd 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 towards 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 amongst 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 nor sense of uneasiness. It simply came and went as the dark
shadow of a thundercloud passing between 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
t