Yet, presently, when she had eaten well, and seemed strengthened and refreshed, the Bishop leaned back in his seat, saying with sudden gravity: 

“And now, my daughter, will you tell me how it has come to pass that you have been led to feel it right to take this irrevocable step, renouncing your vows, and keeping your troth to Hugh?  When last we spoke together you declared that naught would suffice but a clear sign, vouchsafed you from our Lady herself, making it plain that your highest duty was to Hugh, and that Heaven absolved you from your vows.  Was such a sign vouchsafed?”

“Indeed it was, my lord, in wondrous fashion, our Lady choosing as the mouthpiece of her will, by means of a most explicit and unmistakable revelation, one so humble and so simple, that I could but exclaim:  ’Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.’”

“And who,” asked the Bishop, his eyes upon a peach which he was peeling with extreme care; “who, my daughter, was the babe?”

“The old lay-sister, Mary Antony.”

“Ah,” murmured the Bishop, “an ancient babe.  Yet truly, a most worthy babe.  Almost, I should be inclined to say, a wise and prudent babe.”

“Nay, my Lord Bishop,” cried Mora, with a sharp decision of tone which made it please him to imagine that, should he look up from the peach, he would see the severe lines of the wimple and scapulary:  “you and I were the wise and prudent, arguing for and against, according to our own theories and reason.  But to this babe, our Lady vouchsafed a clear vision.”

“Tell me of it,” said the Bishop, splitting his peach and removing the stone which he carefully washed, and slipped into his sash.  The Bishop always kept peach stones, and planted them.

She told him.  She began at the beginning, and told him all, to the minutest detail; the full description of Hugh—­the amazingly correct repetition, in the vision, of the way in which she and Hugh had actually kneeled together before the shrine of the blessed Virgin, of their very words and actions; and, finally, the sublime and gracious tenderness of our Lady’s pronouncement, clearly heard at the close of the vision, by the old lay-sister:  “Take her; she hath been ever thine.  I have but kept her for thee.”

“What say you to that, Reverend Father?” exclaimed Mora, concluding.

“I scarce know what to say,” replied the Bishop.  “For lack of anything better, I fall back upon my favourite motto, and I say:  ’Love never faileth.’”

Now, generally, she delighted in the exceeding aptness of the Bishop’s quotations; but this time it seemed to Mora that his favourite motto bore no sort of relevance.

She felt, with a chill of disappointment and a sense of vexation, that the Bishop’s mind had been so intent upon the fruit, that he had not fully taken in the wonder of the vision.

“It has naught to do with love, my lord,” she said, rather coldly; “unless you mean the divine lovingkindness of our blessed Lady.”