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it might be the Lady Nisida who required her attendance she hastened to open the door; and immediately three women, dressed in religious habits and having black veils thrown over their heads so as completely to conceal their faces, entered the room.
Flora uttered a faint scream—for the sudden apparition of those specter-like figures, at such a late hour of the night, was well calculated to alarm even a person of maturer age and stronger mind than Signora Francatelli.
“You must accompany us, young lady,” said the foremost nun, advancing toward her. “And beware how you create any disturbance—for it will avail you nothing.”
“Whither am I to be conducted?” asked Flora, trembling from head to foot.
“That we cannot inform you,” was the reply. “Neither must you know at present; and therefore our first duty is to blindfold you.”
“Pity me—have mercy upon me!” exclaimed Flora, throwing herself on her knees before the nun who addressed her in so harsh, so stern a manner. “I am a poor, unprotected girl: have mercy upon me!”
But the three nuns seized upon her; and while one held the palm of her hand forcibly over her mouth so as to check her utterance, the others hastily blindfolded her.
Flora was so overcome by this alarming proceeding, that she fainted.
When she came to her senses, she found herself lying on a hard and sorry couch in a large apartment, almost entirely denuded of furniture and lighted by a feebly-burning lamp suspended to the low ceiling.
For a moment she thought she was laboring under the influence of a hideous dream; but, glancing around, she started with affright, and a scream burst from her lips, when she beheld the three nuns standing by the bed.
“Why have you brought me hither?” she demanded, springing from the couch, and addressing the recluses with frantic wildness.
“To benefit you in a spiritual sense,” replied the one who had before acted as spokeswoman: “to purge your mind of those mundane vanities which have seized upon it, and to render you worthy of salvation. Pray, sisters—pray for this at present benighted creature!”
Then, to the surprise of the young maiden, the three nuns all fell upon their knees around her, and began to chant a solemn hymn in most lugubrious notes.
They had thrown aside their veils, and the flickering light of the dim lamp gave a ghastly and unearthly appearance to their pale and severe countenances. They were all three elderly persons: and their aspect was of that cold, forbidding nature, which precludes hope on the part of any one who might have to implore mercy.
The young maiden was astounded—stupefied—she knew not what to conjecture. Where was she? who were those nuns that had treated her so harshly? why was she brought to that cold, cheerless apartment? what meant the hymn that seemed chanted expressly on her account?
She could not bear up against the bewilderment and alarm produced by these questions which she asked herself, and none of which she could solve. An oppressive sensation came over her; and she was about to sink back upon the couch from which she had risen, when the hymn suddenly ceased—the nuns rose from their suppliant posture—and the foremost, addressing the poor girl in a reproachful tone, exclaimed, “Oh! wicked—worldly-minded creature, repent—repent—repent!”
There was something so awful—so appalling—in this strange conduct on the part of the nuns, that Flora began to doubt whether she were not laboring under some terrible delusion. She feared lest her senses were leaving her: and, covering her face with her hands, so as to close her eyes against external objects, she endeavored to look inward, as it were, and scrutinize her own soul.
But she was not allowed time to reflect; for the three nuns seized upon her, the foremost saying, “You must come with us!”
“Mercy! mercy!” screamed the wretched girl, vainly struggling in the powerful grasp of the recluses.
Her long hair, which she had unbraided before she was carried off from the Riverola mansion, floated over her shoulders, and enhanced the expression of ineffable despair which her pallid countenance now wore.
Wildly she glanced around, as she was being hurried from the room; and frantic screams escaped her lips. But there was no one nigh to succor—no one to melt at the outbursts of her anguish!
The three nuns dragged, rather than conducted her to an adjacent apartment, which was lighted by a lamp of astonishing brilliancy, and hung in a skylight raised above the roof.
On the floor, immediately beneath this lamp, stood an armchair of wicker-work; and from this chair two stout cords ascended to the ceiling, through which they passed by means of two holes perforated for the purpose.
When Flora was dragged by the nuns to the immediate vicinity of the chair, which her excited imagination instantly converted into an engine of torture, that part of the floor on which the chair stood seemed to tremble and oscillate beneath her feet, as if it were a trap-door.
The most dreadful sensations now came over her: she felt as if her brain was reeling—as if she must go mad.
A fearful scream burst from her lips, and she struggled with the energy of desperation, as the nuns endeavored to thrust her into the chair.
“No—no!” she exclaimed, frantically; “you shall not torture me—you dare not murder me! What have I done to merit this treatment! Mercy! mercy!”
But her cries and her struggles were alike useless; for she was now firmly bound to the chair, into which the nuns had forced her to seat herself.
Then commenced the maddening scene which will be found in the ensuing chapter.
CHAPTER XIX.
The Descent—The Chamber Of Penitence.
Having bound Flora Francatelli to the chair in the manner just described, the three nuns fell back a few paces, and the wretched girl felt the floor giving way under her.
A dreadful scream burst from her lips, as slowly—slowly the chair sank down, while the working of hidden machinery in the roof, and the steady, monotonous revolution of wheels, sounded with ominous din upon her ears.
An icy stream appeared to pour over her soul; wildly she cast around her eyes, and then more piercing became her shrieks, as she found herself gradually descending into what seemed to be a pit or well—only that it was square instead of round.
The ropes creaked—the machinery continued its regular movement, and the lamp fixed in the skylight overhead became less and less brilliant.
And bending over the mouth of this pit into which she was descending were the three nuns—standing motionless and silent like hideous specters, on the brink of the aperture left by the square platform or trap, whereon the chair was fixed.
“Mercy! Mercy!” exclaimed Flora, in a voice expressive of the most acute anguish.
And stretching forth her snowy arms (for it was round the waist and by the feet that she was fastened to the chair), she convulsively placed her open palms against the wooden walls of the pit, as if she could by that spasmodic movement arrest the descent of the terrible apparatus that was bearing her down into that hideous, unknown gulf! But the walls were smooth and even, and presented nothing whereon she could fix her grasp.
Her brain reeled, and for a few minutes she sat motionless, in dumb, inert despair.
Then again, in obedience to some mechanical impulse, she glanced upward; the light of the lamp was now dimly seen, like the sun through a dense mist—but the dark figures were still bending over the brink of the abyss, thirty yards above.
The descent was still progressing and the noise of the machinery still reached her ears, with buzzing, humming, monotonous indistinctness.