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216 were ever used for other purposes, the slow swinging of the matins' bell, which dully droned over the desolate lands around, stilled all rumour of the fact.

A tempestuous sun was setting in the west;—intense fire lighted for the moment all the rugged and monotonous expanse, flamed in the salt and sluggish waters of the tarn, and reddened all the arid desert of the parching turf. Through a lancet window it shone into a darkened barren room; the grey stone floor uncovered, the pine-wood walls as bare, and the meagre furniture of a convent cell the only things that garnished it. To and fro in the narrow limits paced, as a lioness may pace her den, Idalia. She was a prisoner of a King and of a Church—two gaolers that never in any age have loosed their prey.

The hour had come that she had long foreseen must sooner or later be her fate; she was in the hands of foes whom but a tithe of all that she had done would have sufficed to hound to their worst fury. Fear was not in her now; the blood of Artemisia and of Manual was in her veins, and the fire of the Sea Queen and of the Imperial Soldier flamed too hotly and too proudly there to let dread enter. But a terrible chafing sense of utter