you?"

"He had it from Father Gervaise himself. He told it to me, because his
remembrance of the sacrifice made so long ago in order that the full
completion of wifehood and motherhood might be thine, had always
inclined him to a wistful regret over thy choice of the monastic life,
with its resultant celibacy; leading him, from the first, to espouse
and further my cause. In wedding us to-day, methinks the Bishop felt
he was at last securing the consummation of the noble renunciation made
so long ago by Father Gervaise."

With a growing dread at his heart, Hugh watched the increasing pallor
of her face, the hard line of the lips which, but a few moments before,
had parted in such gentle sweetness.

"Alas!" he exclaimed, "I should not have told thee! With my clumsy
desire to keep nothing from thee, I have spoilt an hour which else
might have been so perfect."

"You did well to tell me, dear Knight of mine," she said, a ripple of
tenderness passing across her stern face, as swiftly and gently as the
breeze stirs a cornfield. "Nor is there anything in this world so
perfect as the truth. If the truth opened an abyss which plunged me
into hell, I would sooner know it, than attempt to enter Paradise
across the flimsy fabric of a lie!"

Her voice, as she uttered these words, had in it the ring which was
wont to petrify wrong-doers of the feebler kind among her nuns.

"Dear Knight, had the Bishop not forestalled me when he named his
palfrey, truly I might have found a fine new name for you! But now, I
pray you of your kindness, leave me alone with my fallen image for a
little space, that I may gather up the fragments and give them decent
burial."

With which her courage broke. She stretched her clasped hands across
the table and laid her head upon her arms.

Despair seized the Knight as he stood helpless, looking down upon that
proud head laid low.

He longed to lay his hand upon the golden softness of her hair.

But her shoulders shook with a hard, tearless sob, and the Knight fled
from the arbour.

As he paced the lawn, on which the Bishop had promenaded the evening
before, Hugh cursed his rashness in speaking; yet knew, in the heart of
his heart, that he could not have done otherwise. Mora's words
concerning truth, gave him a background of comfort. Even so had he
ever himself felt. But would it prove that his honesty had indeed
shattered his chances of happiness, and hers?

A new name? . . . What