here isn't the least doubt in my mind that that was a true relic, for I
got it in the sack of the city of Volterra, out of the private cabinet
of a noble lady, with a lot of jewels and other matters that made quite
a little purse for us. Ah, that was a time, when that city was sacked!
It was hell upon earth for three days, and all our men acted like devils
incarnate; but then they always will in such cases. But go your ways
now, dearie, and I'll stay with your grandmamma; for, please God, you
must be up and away with the sun tomorrow."

Agnes hastily arranged a little basket of fruit and flowers, and took
her way down through the gorge, under the Roman bridge, through an
orange-orchard, and finally came out upon the sea-shore, and so along
the sands below the cliffs on which the old town of Sorrento is
situated.

So cheating and inconsistent is the human heart, especially in the
feminine subject, that she had more than once occasion to chide herself
for the thrill with which she remembered passing the Cavalier once in
this orange-garden, and the sort of vague hope which she detected that
somewhere along this road he might appear again.

"How perfectly wicked and depraved I must be," she said to herself, "to
find any pleasure in such a thought of one I should pray never to meet
again!"

And so the little soul went on condemning herself in those exaggerated
terms which the religious vocabulary of conventual life furnished
ready-made for the use of penitents of every degree, till by the time
she arrived at the Convent she could scarcely have been more oppressed
with a sense of sin, if she had murdered her grandmother and eloped with
the Cavalier.

On her arrival in the Convent court, the peaceful and dreamy stillness
contrasted strangely with the gorgeous brightness of the day outside.
The splendid sunshine, the sparkling sea, the songs of the boatmen, the
brisk passage of gliding sails, the bright hues of the flowers that
garlanded the rocks, all seemed as if the earth had been arrayed for
some gala-day; but the moment she had passed the portal, the silent,
mossy court, with its pale marble nymph, its lull of falling water, its
turf snow-dropt with daisies and fragrant with blue and white violets,
and the surrounding cloistered walks, with their pictured figures of
pious history, all came with a sad and soothing influence on her nerves.

The nuns, who had heard the news of the projected pilgrimage, and
regarded it