“All the people of Albano came to the funeral and there was not a dry eye as the cortege passed from our chapel to the grave.  Everybody knew the story of my sister’s hopeless love, but only two in the world knew the secret of her tragic death—­her young lover, who was sobbing aloud as he staggered along with her body on his shoulder, and her old father, who was walking bareheaded and in silence, behind him.”

My heart was beating audibly and the Reverend Mother stroked my hand to compose me—­perhaps to compose herself also.  It was now quite dark, the stars were coming out, and the bells of the two monasteries on opposite sides of the lake were ringing the first hour of night.

“That’s my sister’s story, Mary,” said the Reverend Mother after a while, “and the moral of my own is the same, though the incidents are different.

“I was now my father’s only child and all his remaining hopes centred in me.  So he set himself to find a husband for me before the time came when I should form an attachment for myself.  His choice fell on a middle-aged Roman noble of distinguished but impoverished family.

“’He has a great name; you will have a great fortune—­what more do you want?’ said my father.

“We were back in Rome by this time, and there—­at school or elsewhere—­I had formed the conviction that a girl must passionately love the man she marries, and I did not love the Roman noble.  I had also been led to believe that a girl should be the first and only passion of the man who marries her, and, young as I was, I knew that my middle-aged lover had had other domestic relations.

“Consequently I demurred, but my father threatened and stormed, and then, remembering my sister’s fate, I pretended to agree, and I was formally engaged.

“I never meant to keep my promise, and I began to think out schemes by which to escape from it.  Only one way seemed open to me then, and cherishing the thought of it in secret, I waited and watched and made preparations for carrying out my purpose.

“At length the moment came to me.  It was mid-Lent, and a masked ball was given by my fiance’s friends in one of the old Roman palaces.  I can see it still—­the great hall, ablaze with glowing frescoes, beautiful Venetian candelabras, gilded furniture, red and yellow damask and velvet, and then the throng of handsome men in many uniforms and beautiful women with rows of pearls falling from their naked throats.

“I had dressed myself as a Bacchante in a white tunic embroidered in gold, with bracelets on my bare arms, a tiger-skin band over my forehead, and a cluster of grapes in my hair.

“I danced every dance, I remember, most of them with my middle-aged lover, and I suppose no one seemed so gay and happy and heedless.  At three o’clock in the morning I returned home in my father’s carriage.  At six I had entered a convent.

“Nobody in the outer world ever knew what had become of me, and neither did I know what happened at home after I left it.  The rule of the convent was very strict.  Sometimes, after morning prayers, the Superior would say, ‘The mother of one of you is dead—­pray for her soul,’ and that was all we ever heard of the world outside.