Symon of Worcester rose and stood, a noble figure in crimson and gold, at the top of the hall.  But for the silver moonlight of his hair, he might have been a man in his prime—­so erect was his carriage, so keen and bright were his eyes.

The tall woman in the doorway gave a little cry; then moved quickly forward.

“You?” she said.  “You!  The priest who is to wed us?  You!”

He stood his ground, awaiting her approach.

“Yes, I,” he said; “I.”

Half-way across the hall, she paused.

“No,” she said, as if to herself.  “I dream.  It is not Father Gervaise.  It is the Bishop.”

She drew nearer.

Earnestly he looked upon her, striving to see in her the Prioress of
Whytstone—­the friend of all these happy, peaceful, blessed years.

But the Prioress had vanished.

Mora de Norelle stood before him, taller by half a head than he, flushed by long galloping in the night breeze; nerves strung to breaking point; eyes bright with the great unrest of a headlong leap into a new world.  Yet the firm sweet lips were there, unchanged; and, even as he marked them, they quivered and parted.

“Reverend Father,” she said, “I have chosen, even as you prayed I might do, the harder part.”  She flung aside the riding-whip she carried; and folding her hands, held them up before him.  “For Christ’s sake, my Lord Bishop, pray for me!”

He took those folded hands in his, gently parted them, and held them against the cross upon his heart.

“You have chosen rightly, my child,” he said; “we will pray that grace and strength may be vouchsafed you, so that you may continue, without faltering, along the pathway of this fresh vocation.”

She looked at him with searching gaze.  The kind and gentle eyes of the Bishop met hers without wavering; also without any trace of the fire—­the keen brightness—­which had startled her as she stood in the doorway.

“Reverend Father,” she said, and there was a strange note of bewildered question in her voice:  “I pray you, tell me what you bid penitents to remember as they kneel in prayer before the crucifix?”

The Bishop looked full into those starry grey eyes bent upon him, and his own did not falter.  His mild voice took on a shade of sternness as befitted the solemn subject of her question.

“I tell them, my daughter, to remember, the sacred Wounds that bled and the Heart that broke for them.”

She drew her hands from beneath his, and stepped back a pace.

“The Heart that broke?” she said.  “That broke?  Do hearts break?” she cried.  “Nay, rather, they turn to stone.”  She laughed wildly, then caught her breath.  The Knight had entered the hall.

With free, glad step, and head uplifted, Hugh d’Argent came to them, where they stood.

“My Lord Bishop,” he said, “you have been too good to us.  I sent Mora on alone that she might find you here, not telling her who was the prelate who had so graciously offered to wed us, knowing how much it would mean to her that it should be you, Reverend Father.”