"Ah, me! it is the eve of the Purification. My son, seventy years ago to-day the woman was born whose connection with the house of Negropontini has shrouded it in gloom, like the portrait you have seen in the saloon. Seventy years ago to-day my father's neighbor, the Count Balbo, saw for the first time the face of the first daughter his wife had given him. The countess lay motionless--the flame of existence flickered between life and death. "'Adorable Mother of God!' said the count, as he knelt by her bedside, 'if thou restorest my wife, my daughter shall be consecrated to thy service.' "The slow hours dragged heavily by. The mother lived. "My brother Camillo and I were but two and four years older than our little neighbor. We were children together, and each other's playmates. When the little neighbor, Sulpizia Balbo, was fourteen, Camillo was eighteen. My son, the sky of Venice never shone on a more beautiful girl, on a youth more grave and tender. He loved her with his whole soul. Gran' Dio! 'tis the old, old story! "She was proud, wayward, passionate, with a splendor of wit and unusual intelligence. He was calm, sweet, wise; with a depthless tenderness of passion. But Sulpizia inherited her will from her father, and at fourteen she was sacrificed to the vow he had made. She was buried alive in the convent of our Lady of the Isle, and my brother's heart with her. III. "Sulpizia's powerful nature chafed in the narrow bounds of the convent discipline. But her religious education assured her that that discipline was so much the more necessary, and she struggled with the sirens of worldly desire. The other sisters were shocked and surprised, at one moment by her surpassing fervor, at another by her bold and startling protests against their miserable bondage. "Often, at vespers, in the dim twilight of the chapel, she flung back her cape and hood, with the tears raining from her eyes and her voice gushing and throbbing with the melancholy music, while the nuns paused in their singing, appalled by the religious ecstasy of Sulpizia. She was so sweet and gentle in her daily intercourse that all of them loved her, bending to her caresses like grain to the breeze; but they trembled in the power of her denunciation, which shook their faith to the centre, for it seemed to be the voice of a faith so much profounder. "While she was yet young she was elected abbess of the convent. It was a day of triumph for her powerful family. Perhaps the Count Balbo may have sometimes regretted that solemn vow, but he never betrayed repentance. Perhaps he would have been more secretly satisfied by the triumphant worldly career of a woman like his daughter, but he never said so. "Sulpizia knew that my brother loved her. I think she loved him--at least I thought so.