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136 she left my cell, and that as I lifted it, and sent Daughter Virginia with it after her, I saw engraven on the lid one word only—'Idalia.'" "Idalia!" He repeated the word with passionate tremulous eagerness; it seemed to him the sweetest poem poets could ever dream, the fairest echo that ever the world heard, the treasury of all that womanhood could give of beauty, grace, and lore, that single Greek name of the woman he pursued; yet,—it could serve him in nothing.

"Idalia!—Idalia! That will do nothing to find her? Oh, my God! she is lost to me as she was lost in Sicily!" The words were more full of bitterness than any she had ever heard wrung from him by his physical anguish, while he paced up and down the narrow chamber.

"It is very strange; but indeed it was no fault of mine," pleaded the Abbess, a little piteously, for she saw that it was a heavy blow to him, and she dreaded alike to see the pain or the wrath of that unchastened Pagan nature before which the Mother Superior, used only to deal with and chasten or solace the untroubled souls of guileless women, whose heaviest sin was an omitted prayer, felt