“Has it to do with my flight from the Convent?” she asked.

He bowed his head.

“Will you tell me the matter on your return, Hugh?”

“I know not,” he answered, with face averted.  “I cannot say.”  Then with sudden violence:  “Oh, my God, Mora, ask me no more!  See the Bishop, I must!  Speak with him, I must!  In nine days at the very most, I will be back with thee.  Duty takes me, my beloved, or I would not go.”

Her mind responded instinctively to the word “duty,” “Go then, dear Knight,” she said.  “Settle this business with Symon of Worcester.  I have no desire to know its purport.  If it concerns my flight from the Convent, surely the Pope’s mandate is all-sufficient.  But, be it what it may, in the hands of my faithful Knight and of my trusted friend, the Bishop, I may safely leave it.  I do but ask that, the work accomplished, you come with all speed back to me.”

With a swift movement he dropped on one knee at her feet.

“Send me away with a blessing,” he said.  “Bless me before I go.”

She laid her hands on the bowed head.

“Alas!” she cried, “how shall I let thee go?”

Then, pushing her fingers deeper into his hair and bending over him, with infinite tenderness:  “How shall thy wife bless thee?” she whispered.

He caught his breath, as the fragrance of the newly gathered roses at her bosom reached and enveloped him.

“Bless me,” he said, hoarsely, “as the Prioress of the White Ladies used to bless her nuns, and the Poor at the Convent gate.”

“Dear Heart,” she said, and smiled.  “That seems so long ago!” Then, as with bent head he still waited, she steadied her voice, lifting her hands from off him; then laid them back upon his head, with reverent and solemn touch.  “The Lord bless thee,” she said, “and keep thee; and may our blessed Lady, who hath restored me to thee, bring thee safely back to me again.”

At that, Hugh raised his head and looked up into her face, and the misery in his eyes stirred her tenderness as it had never been stirred by the vivid love-light or the soft depths of passion she had heretofore seen in them.

Her lips parted; her breath came quickly.  She would have caught him to her bosom; she would have kissed away this unknown sorrow; she would have smothered the pain, in the sweetness of her embrace.

But bending swiftly he lifted the hem of her robe and touched it with his lips; then, rising, turned and left her without a word; without a backward look.

He left her standing there, alone in the banqueting hall.  And as she stood listening, with beating heart, to the sound of his voice raised in command; to the quick movements of his horse’s hoofs on the paving stones, as he swung into the saddle; to the opening of the gates and the riding forth of the little cavalcade, a change seemed to have come over her.  She ceased to feel herself a happy, yielding bride, a traveller in distant lands, after long journeyings, once more at home.