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88 flowers of the ruin. Only the arches which supported the vaulted roof of the chapel had resisted the corroding influence of time.

The nurse would have now willingly returned to the villa, and Berta's father had no desire to go any further; but Berta passed through the ruined portico, and they were obliged to follow her.

She made her way into the chapel, passing under the crumbling arches which threatened at every moment to fall down and crush her, and she emerged at what must have been the centre of the monastery; for the remains of the wall and some broken and unsteady pilasters showed four paths which, uniting at their extremities, formed a square. This must have been the cloister; in the middle were vestiges of a choked-up cistern.

Here Berta sat down on a piece of cornice which was imbedded in the rubbish. She seemed pleased in the midst of this desolation. Her father and the nurse joined her with terror depicted on their countenances; they had heard the noise of footsteps in the chapel; more, Juana had seen a shadow glide away; how or where she did not know, but she was sure that she had seen it.

Berta smiled and said:

"The noise of footsteps and a shadow? Very well; what harm can those footsteps or that shadow do us? They are perhaps the footsteps