CHAPTER LI

TWO NOBLE HEARTS GO DIFFERENT WAYS

On that same afternoon, an hour before sunset, the two men who loved Mora faced one another, for a final farewell.

The Bishop had said all he had to say.  Without interruption, his words had flowed steadily on; eloquent, logical, conciliatory, persuasive.

At first he had talked to the top of the Knight’s head, to the clenched hands, to the arms outstretched across the table.

He had wondered what thoughts were at work beneath the crisp thickness of that dark hair.  He had wished the rigid attitude of tense despair might somewhat relax.  He had used the most telling inflexions of his persuasive voice in order to bring this about, but without success.  He had wished the Knight would break silence, even to rage or to disagree.  To that end he had cast as a bait an intentional slip in a statement of facts; and, later on, a palpable false deduction in a weighty argument.  But the Knight had not risen to either.

After a while Hugh had lifted his head, and leaned back in his chair; fixing his eyes, in his turn, upon the banner hanging from the rafters.

It had ceased to wave gently to and fro.  Probably Father Benedict had closed the trap-door, concealed behind an upright beam, through which he was wont to peer down into the banqueting hall below, in order to satisfy himself that all was well and that the Reverend Father needed naught.

Let it be here recorded that this exceeding vigilance, on the part of Father Benedict, met with but scant reward.  For, having deduced a draught, and its reason, from the slight stirring of the banner during his conversation with the Knight, the Bishop gave certain secret instructions to Brother Philip, with the result that the next time the Chaplain peered down upon a private conference he found, at its close, the door by which he had gained access to the roof chamber barred on the outside, and, forcing it, he was in no better case, the ladder which connected it with another disused chamber below having been removed.  Thereafter Father Benedict watched the Bishop, and his guest, partake of three meals, before he could bring himself to make known his predicament, and beg to be released.  And, even then, the Bishop was amazingly slow in locating the place from which issued the agitated voice imploring assistance.  Several brethren were summoned to help; so that quite a little crowd stood gazing up at the pallid countenance of Father Benedict, framed in the trap-door as, lying upon his very empty stomach, he called down replies to the Bishop’s questions; vainly striving to give a plausible reason for the peculiar situation in which he was discovered.

But, to return to the interview which brought about this later development.

The Knight had lifted his head, yet had still remained silent and impassive.