“Precisely,” replied the Bishop, leaning back in his seat, and at length looking straight into Mora’s earnest eyes.  “The divine lovingkindness of our blessed Lady never faileth.”

“You agree, my lord, that the vision shed a clear light upon all my perplexities?”

“Absolutely clear,” replied the Bishop.  “The love which arranged the vision saw to that.  Revelations, my daughter, are useless unless they are explicit.  Had our Lady merely waved her marble hand, instead of stooping to take yours and place it in that of the Knight, you might have thought she was waving him away, and bidding you to remain.  If her marble hand moved at all, it is well that it moved in so definite and practical a manner.”

“It seems to me, Reverend Father,” said Mora, leaning upon the table, her face framed in her hands, and looking with knitted brows at the Bishop; “it almost seems to me that you regard the entire vision with a measure of secret incredulity.”

“Nay, my daughter, there you mistake.  On the contrary I am fully convinced, by that which you tell me, that the ancient babe, Mary Antony, was undoubtedly permitted to see you and your knightly lover kneeling hand in hand before our Lady’s shrine; also I praise our blessed Lady that by vouchsafing this sight to Mary Antony, and by allowing her to hear words which you yourself know to have been in very deed actually spoken, your mind has been led to accept as the divine will for you, this return to the world and union with your lover, which will, I feel sure, be not only for your happiness and his, but also a fruitful source of good to many.  Yet, I admit——­”

The Bishop paused, and considered; as if anxious to say just so much, and neither more nor less.  Continuing, he spoke slowly, weighing each word.  “Yet, I frankly admit, I would sooner for mine own guidance listen for the Voice of God within, or learn His will from the written Word, than ask for miraculous signs, or act upon the visions of others.

“No doubt you read, in the Chronicle I lately lent you, how ’in the year of our Lord eleven hundred and thirty-seven—­that time of many sorrows, of burning, pillaging, rapine and torture, when the city of York was burned together with the principal monastery; the city of Rochester was consumed; also the Church of Bath, and the city of Leicester; when owing to the absence of King Stephen abroad and the mildness of his rule when at home, the barons greatly oppressed and ill-used the Church and the people—­while many were standing at the Celebration of Mass at Windsor, they beheld the Crucifix, which was over the altar, moving and wringing its hands, now the right hand with the left, now the left with the right, after the manner of those who are in distress.’

“This wondrous sight convinced those who saw it that the crucified Redeemer sympathised with the grievous sorrows of the land.

“But no carven crucifix, wringing its hands before a gazing crowd, could so deeply convince me of the sympathy of the Redeemer as to sit alone in mine own chamber and read from the book of Isaiah the Prophet:  ‘Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows.’”