In two days’ time Hugh would ride away alone.  Unless a miracle happened, Mora would not be with him.

The Bishop faced defeat as he looked into those clear eyes, fearless even in their sorrowful humility.

“Oh, child,” he said, “you love Hugh!  Can you let him ride forth alone, accompanied only by the grim spectres of unfaith and of despair?  His hope, his faith, his love, all centre in you.  Another Prioress can be found for this Nunnery.  No other bride can be found for Hugh d’Argent.  He will have his own betrothed, or none.”

Still kneeling, the Prioress threw back her head, looking upward, with clasped hands.

“Reverend Father,” she said, “I will not go to the man I love, trailing broken vows, like chains, behind me.  There could be no harmony in life’s music.  Whene’er I moved, where’er I trod, I should hear the constant clanking of those chains.  No man can set me free from vows made to God.  But——­”

The Prioress paused, looking past the Bishop at the gracious figure of the Madonna.  She had remembered, of a sudden, how Hugh had knelt there, saying:  “Blessed Virgin . . . help this woman of mine to understand that if she break her troth to me, holding herself from me, now, when I am come to claim her, she sends me out to an empty life, to a hearth beside which no woman will sit, to a home forever desolate.”

“But?” said the Bishop, leaning forward.  “Yes, my daughter?  But?”

“But if our blessed Lady herself vouchsafed me a clear sign that my first duty is to Hugh, if she absolved me from my vows, making it evident that God’s will for me is that, leaving the Cloister, I should wed Hugh and dwell with him in his home; then I would strive to bring myself to do this thing.  But I can take release from none save from our Lord, to Whom those vows were made, or from our Lady, who knoweth the heart of a woman, and whose grace hath been with me all through the strivings and conflicts of the years that are past.”

The Bishop sighed.  “Alas,” he said; “alas, poor Hugh!”

For that our Lady should vouchsafe a clear sign, would have to be a miracle; and, though he would not have admitted it to the Prioress, the Bishop believed, in his secret heart, that the age of miracles was past.

One so fixed in her determination, so persistent in her assertion, so loud in her asseveration, would scarce be likely to hear the inward whisperings of Divine suggestion.

Therefore, should our Lady intervene with clear guidance, that intervention must be miraculous.  And the Bishop sighing, said:  “Alas, poor Hugh!”

His eye fell upon the fragments of rent vellum on the floor.  He held out his hand.

The Prioress gathered up the fragments, and placed them in the Bishop’s outstretched hand.

“Alas, my lord,” she said, “you were witness of my grievous sin in thus rending the gracious message of His Holiness.  Will it please you to appoint me a penance, if such an act can indeed be expiated?”