midday
it is indeed Agnes ! '' cried Wagner , in a tone of the most profound heart-rending anguish , and he fell back senseless in the arms of the lieutenant . An hour afterward , Fernand Wagner was the inmate of a dungeon beneath the palace inhabited by the Duke of Florence . Punctually at midday , the Lady Nisida of Riverola proceeded , alone and unattended , to the Convent of Carmelite Nuns , where she was immediately admitted into the presence of the abbess . The superior of this monastic establishment , was a tall , thin , stern-looking woman , with a sallow complexion , an imperious compression of the lips , and small , grey eyes , that seemed to flicker with malignity rather than to beam with the pure light of Christian love . She was noted for the austerity of her manners , the rigid discipline which she maintained in the convent , and the inexorable disposition which she showed toward those who , having committed a fault , came within her jurisdiction . Rumor was often busy with the affairs of the Carmelite Convent ; and the grandams and gossips of Florence would huddle together around their domestic hearths , on the cold winter 's evenings , and venture mysterious hints and whispers of strange deeds committed within the walls of that sacred institution ; how from time to time some young and beautiful nun had suddenly disappeared , to the surprise and alarm of her companions ; how piercing shrieks had been heard to issue from the interior of the building , by those who passed near it at night , -- and how the inmates themselves were often aroused from their slumbers by strange noises resembling the rattling of chains , the working of ponderous machinery , and the revolution of huge wheels .