“Also,” said Mora, slowly:  “a very precious memory of my early days at Court, when as a young maiden I attended on the Queen, was kept alive by a remarkable likeness in the Bishop to one who was, as I learned this morning for the first time, actually near of kin to him.  Do you remember, Hugh, long years ago, that I spoke to you of Father Gervaise?”

“I do remember,” said the Knight.

She leaned her elbows on the table, framed her face in her hands, and looked straight into his eyes.

“Father Gervaise was more to me than I then told you, Hugh.”

“What was he to thee, Mora?”

“He was the Ideal of my girlhood.  For a time, I thought of him by day, I dreamed of him by night.  No word of his have I ever forgotten.  Many of his sayings and precepts have influenced, and still deeply influence, my whole life.  In fact, Hugh, I loved Father Gervaise; not as a woman loves a man—­ah, no!  But, rather, as a nun loves her Lord.”

“I see,” said the Knight.  “But you were not then a nun, Mora.”

“No, I was not then a nun.  But I have been a nun since then; and that is how I can best describe my love for the Queen’s Confessor.”

“Long after,” said the Knight, “you were betrothed to me?”

“Yes, Hugh.”

“How did you love me, Mora?”

Across the rustic table they looked full into each other’s eyes.  Tragedy, stalking around that rose-covered arbour, drew very near, and they knew it.  Almost, his grim shadow came between them and the sunshine.

Then the Knight smiled; and with that smile rushed back the flood-tide of remembrance; remembrance of all which their young love had meant, of the sweet promise it had held.

His eyes still holding hers, she smiled also.

The golden roses clustering in the entrance swayed and nodded in the sunlight, as a gently rising breeze fanned them to and fro.

“Dear Knight,” she said, softly, a wistful tenderness in her voice, “I suppose I loved you, as a girl loves the man who has won her.”

“Mora,” said Hugh, “I have something to tell thee.”

“I listen,” she said.

“My wife—­so wholly, so completely, do I love thee, that I would not consciously keep anything from thee.  So deeply do I love thee, that I would sooner any wrong or sin of mine were known to thee and by thee forgiven, than that thou shouldest think me one whit better than I am.”

He paused.

Her eyes were tender and compassionate.  Often she had listened, with a patient heart of charity, to the tedious, morbid, self-centred confessions of kneeling nuns, who watched with anxious eyes for the sign which would mean that they might clutch at the hem of her robe and press it to their lips in token that they were forgiven.

But she had had no experience of the sins of men.  What had the “splendid Knight” upon his conscience, which must now be told her, in this sunny arbour, on the morning of their bridal day?