but that did not matter. She took out the stopper with her strong
fingers, though it stuck a little. The pain ran through her again as she
poured some of the contents into the tumbler, and it made her hand shake
so that she poured out a little more than necessary. But it did not
matter. She filled it up with water, held the glass up to the moonlight,
and drank it at a draught, and set the empty tumbler upon the table
again.

Instantly her features changed. She felt as though she were struck
through head and heart and body with red-hot steel. Maria Addolorata's
death-mask rose before her in the moonlight.

"An evil death on you and all your house!" she tried to say.

But the words were not out of her mouth before she shivered, caught
herself by the table, sank down, and lay stone dead upon the brick
floor.

There was no noise. Dying, she thought she screamed, but only the
faintest moan had passed her lips.

The door was shut, and the quiet moonlight floated in and silvered her
dark, dead face.

CHAPTER XIV.

AT moonrise on that evening, Maria Addolorata was standing at the open
door of her cell, watching the dark clouds in the west, as they caught
the light one by one, edge by edge. The black shadow of the convent
covered all the garden still, and one passing could hardly have seen her
as she stood there. Her veil was raised, and the cold mountain breeze
chilled her cheeks. But she did not feel it, for she had been long by
the abbess's bedside, and then long, again, in the close choir of the
church, and her head was hot and aching.

To her, as she looked towards the western mountains and watched the
piling clouds, and felt the cool, damp wind, it seemed as though there
were something strangely tragic in the air that night. The wind whistled
now and then through the cracks of the convent windows and over the
crenellations of the old walls, as Death's scythe might whistle if he
were mowing down men with a right good will, heaps upon heaps of slain.
The old bell struck the hour, sullenly, with a dead thud in the air
after each stroke, as a bell tolls for a burial. The very clouds were
black and silver in the sky, like a funeral pall.

Maria Addolorata leaned against the door-post and looked out, her hand
white in the shadow against the dark wood, her face whiter still. But on
her hand there were two marks, visible even in the dimness. They would
have been red in the day, and the place hurt her from time t