Amongst the strangers was one, a lady of mature age, with beauty still powerful enough to fascinate all beholders, who seemed to survey Paulina with an interest far beyond that of curiosity or simple admiration. Sorrow might be supposed the common bond which connected them; for there were rumors amongst the sisterhood of St. Agnes that this lady had suffered afflictions heavier than fell to an ordinary lot in the course of the war which now desolated Germany. Her husband (it was said), of whom no more was known than that he was some officer of high rank, had perished by the hand of violence; a young daughter, the only child of two or three who remained to her, had been carried off in infancy, and no traces remained of her subsequent fate. To these misfortunes was added the loss of her estates and rank, which, in some mysterious way, were supposed to be withheld from her by one of those great oppressors whom war and the policy of great allies had aggrandized. It was supposed even that for the means of subsistence to herself, and a few faithful attendants, she was indebted to the kindness of the lady abbess, with whom she was closely connected by ancient friendship. In this tale there were many inaccuracies mixed up with the truth. It was true that, in some one of the many dire convulsions which had passed from land to land since the first outbreak of the Bohemian troubles, in 1618, and which had covered with a veil of political pretexts so many local acts of private family feud and murderous treason, this lady had been deprived of her husband by a violent death under circumstances which still seemed mysterious. But the fate of her children, if any had survived the calamity which took off her husband, was unknown to everybody except her confidential protectress, the lady abbess. By permission of this powerful friend, who had known her from infancy, and through the whole course of her misfortunes, she was permitted to take up her abode in the convent, under special privileges, and was there known by the name of Sister Madeline. The intercourse of the Sister Madeline with the lady abbess was free and unreserved. At all hours they entered each other's rooms with the familiarity of sisters; and it might have been thought that in every respect they stood upon the equal footing of near relatives, except that occasionally in the manners of the abbess was traced, or imagined, a secret air of deference towards the desolate Sister Madeline, which, as it was not countenanced at all by their present relations to each other, left people at liberty to build upon it a large superstructure of romantic conjectures.