It was indeed a sight to move the pity of Heaven; the innocent, white-gowned girl kneeling on the cold stone floor of the damp cell, with her bare feet and naked arms and shoulders, her appealing blue eyes raised upward, the golden hair streaming like a shining veil about her slender form, her sweet lips moving in prayer to God. Would He indeed hear that prayer unmoved, or would He send her relief? The slow hours dragged away without interruption, and she saw with terror that her miserable light began to flicker with exhaustion. Soon the desolation of darkness would be added to loneliness and hunger. CHAPTER XXII. UNMASKED. Dainty fell back, sobbing, on her hard couch, her frame shaking as with an ague chill. The horror of her position was enough to drive her mad. It seemed to her that she was entombed alive, and left to her fate--left to die of darkness, terror, grief, and starvation, the wretched victim of a most cruel persecution; she who had so much to live for; youth, health, beauty, and a loving young husband! Her faltering voice rang out in a despairing prayer: "Oh, God, have mercy on me, and on my poor unhappy husband and mother, whose hearts I know are aching with grief over my mysterious absence! Oh, send some pitying angel to guide them to my dreary prison!" As if in answer to the wild aspiration, a key suddenly clicked in the lock outside, and she sprang upright on the cot with a strangling gasp of fear and hope commingled. Slowly the heavy oaken door swung outward wide enough to admit a tall, dark-gowned figure, then shut inward again, locking Dainty in with the feared and abhorred ghost of the old monk. In the dim, flickering light of the cell, the horrible figure towered above the girl, who crouched low in breathless fear at the dreaded apparition, speech frozen on her lips, her heart sinking till the blood seemed freezing in her veins, not observing in her alarm that the ghost had a rather prosaic air by reason of carrying a large basket on one arm. Suddenly the ghastly creature spoke: the first time it had ever opened its lips in all its visitations to Dainty. "You don't seem glad to see me," it observed, in hoarse, mocking accents that somehow had a familiar ring in her ears. There flashed over her mind some words that Lovelace Ellsworth had said to her lately: "I am convinced that the pretended monk is a creature of flesh and blood, and if you could only summon courage to tear away its mask when it calls on you again, you would most likely find beneath it the coarse Sheila Kelly, or very probably one of your malicious cousins. Try it next time, and you will see that I am right, darling."