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Rh —she is out to-day for the first time. Make haste, for she will remain in the open air only a short while." Beatrice had curiosity enough to lay down the silk she was embroidering, and hasten to the convent garden. Encircled by large old pine-trees, whose gloomy green has no sympathy with the seasons, with boughs whose unchanging foliage maintains a selfish triumph over winter, and stands, sullen and sombre, apart from summer, there was no outward sign of the garden within. It was a bright spring morning—a spring of the South, which only counts its hours by flowers. Many of the walks wound through thickets of myrtle, now putting forth its young and fragrant leaves; others were bordered by straight lines of cypress—those stately and graceful columns, like the pillars of some natural temple. In the midst was one immense cedar, worthy to have been a summer palace on Lebanon; beneath, sheltered by its huge boughs from the sun, was a well, whose square marble walls were covered with the entablatures of the Roman days,—oval compartments of figures, surrounded by a carved wreath of the palm. They had probably told some mythological fiction, now nearly effaced. Beside the