“Take this with thee to thy jasper seat, dear faithful heart,” he said; “for truly it was given unto thee to perceive and know what things thou oughtest to do, and also to have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same.”

The peaceful face, growing beautiful with that solemn look of eternal youth which death brings, even to the aged, seemed to smile, as the precious parchment passed into the keeping of those folded hands.

The Bishop knelt long in prayer and thanksgiving.  At length, with uplifted face, he said:  “And grant, O my God, that I too may be faithful, unto the very end.”

Then he rose, and rang the Convent bell.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE “SPLENDID KNIGHT”

On the steps of Warwick Castle stood the Knight and his bride.

Their eyes still lingered on the archway through which the noble figure of Symon, Bishop of Worcester, mounted upon his black mare, Shulamite, had just disappeared from view.

The marriage had taken place in the Castle chapel, half an hour before, with an astonishing amount of pomp and ceremony.  Priests and acolytes had appeared from unexpected places.  Madonna lilies, on graceful stem, gleamed white in the shadows of the sacred place.  Solemn music rose and fell; the deep roll of the Gregorian chants, beginning with a low hum as of giant bees in a vast field of clover; swelling, in full-throated unison, a majestic volume of sound which rang against the rafters, waking echoes in the clerestory; then rumbling back into silence.

Standing beneath the sacred canopy, the bridal pair lifted their eyes to the high altar and saw, amid a cloud of incense, the Bishop, in gorgeous vestments, descending the steps and coming toward them.

To Mora, at the time, and afterwards in most thankful remembrance, the wonder of that which followed lay in the fact that where she had dreaded an inevitable sense of sacrilege in giving to another that which had been already consecrated to God, the Bishop so worded the service as to make her feel that she could still be spiritually the bride of Christ, even while fulfilling her troth to Hugh; also that, in accepting the call to this new Vocation, she was not falling from her old estate, but rather rising above it.

As the words were spoken which made her a wife, it seemed as if the Bishop gently wrapped her about with a fresh mantle of dignity—­that dignity which had fallen from her in those moments of humiliation when, at Hugh’s bidding she laid herself down upon the stretcher.

The Bishop voiced the Church with a pomp and power which could not be withstood; and when, in obedience to his command Hugh grasped her right hand with his right hand, and the Bishop laid his own on either side of their clasped hands, and pronounced them man and wife, it seemed indeed as if a Divine touch united them, as if a Divine voice ratified their vows and sanctified their union.