and saw her. Into his eyes flashed a light of
triumphant joy, of adoring love and admiration. She had avoided
looking at her own reflection; but his face, as he came up the steps,
mirrored her loveliness. It had cost her such anguish of soul to
divest herself of her sacred habit and don these gay garments belonging
to a life long left behind, that his evident delight in the change,
moved her to an unreasonable resentment. Also that sudden blaze of
love in his dark eyes, dazzled her heart, even as a burst of sunshine
might dazzle one used to perpetual twilight.

She took the Bishop's letter, with averted eyes; read it; then moved
swiftly down the steps to where Icon waited.

"Mount me," she said to Martin Goodfellow, as she passed him; and it
was Martin who swung her into the saddle.

Then she trembled at what she had done, in yielding to this impulse
which made her shrink from Hugh.

As the black mane of his horse drew level with Icon's head, and side by
side they rode out from the courtyard, she feared a thunder-cloud on
the Knight's brow, and a sullen silence, as the best she could expect.
But calm and cheerful, his voice fell on her ear; and glancing at him
furtively, she still saw on his face that light which dazzled her
heart. Yet no word did he speak which all might not have heard, and
not once did he lay his hand on hers. Each time they dismounted, she
saw him sign to Martin Goodfellow, and it was Martin who helped her to
alight.

All this, in rapid retrospect, passed through Mora's mind as she stood
alone beside her splendid Knight, miserably conscious that she had
shivered, and that he knew it; and fearful lest he divined the
shrinking of her soul away from him, away from love, away from all for
which love stood. Alas, alas! Why did this man--this most human,
ardent, loving man--hang all his hopes of happiness upon the heart of a
nun? Would it be possible that he should understand, that eight years
of cloistered life cannot be renounced in a day?

Mora looked at him again.

The stern profile might well be about to say: "Shudder again, and I
will do to thee that which shall give thee cause to shudder indeed!"

Yet, at that moment he spoke, and his voice was infinitely gentle.

"Yonder rides a true friend," he said. "One who has learned love's
deepest lesson."

"What is love's deepest lesson?" she asked.

He turned and looked at her, and the fire of his dark eyes was drowned
in tenderness