eful deliberation, his eyes
upon the letter, yet telling, instead of reading; a method ofttimes
maddening to an anxious listener, eager to snatch the parchment and
master its contents for himself; yet who must perforce wait to receive
them, with due patience, from another.

"The Prioress relates to me first of all a conversation she had, by my
suggestion, with Sister Mary Serephine, in which she told that lady
much of what passed between herself and me when she consulted me upon
the apparent desire of this nun to escape from the Convent, renounce
her vows, and return to her lover and the world--her lover who had come
to save her."

The Bishop paused.

The Knight stirred uneasily in his seat. A net seemed to be closing
around him. Almost he saw himself compelled to ride to Warwick in
company with this most undesired and undesirable nun, Mary Seraphine.

The Bishop raised his eyes from the letter and looked pensively into
the fire.

"A most piteous scene took place," he said, "on the day when Sister
Seraphine first heard again the call of the outer world. Most moving
it was, as told me by the Prioress. The distraught nun lay upon the
floor of her cell in an abandonment of frantic weeping. She imitated
the galloping of a horse with her hands and feet, a ride of some sort
evidently being in her mind. At length she lifted a swollen
countenance, crying that her lover had come to save her."

The Knight clenched his teeth, in despair. Almost, he and this
fearsome nun had arrived at Warwick, and she was lifting a swollen
countenance to him that he might embrace it.

Yet Mora well knew that he had not come for any Seraphine! Mora might
deny herself to him; but she would not foist another upon him. Only,
alas! this grave and Reverend Prioress of whom the Bishop spoke, hardly
seemed one with the woman of his desire; she who, but three evenings
before, had yielded her lips to his, clasping her arms around him;
loving, even while she denied him.

The Bishop's eyes were again upon the letter.

"The Prioress," he said, "with her usual instinctive sense of the
helpfulness of outward surroundings, and desiring, with a fine justice,
to give Seraphine--and her lover--every possible advantage, arranged
that the conversation should take place in the Nunnery garden, in a
secluded spot where they could not be overheard, yet where the sunshine
glinted, through overhanging branches, flecking, in golden patches, the
soft turf