“He would have had you to become a party, with himself, and old Mary Antony, in my permanent deception?”

Hugh was a loyal friend.

“He would have had me to become a party, with himself, in securing your permanent peace, Mora,” he said, sternly.

She loved his sternness.  So much did she adore him for having triumphed where she had made sure that he would fail, so much did she despise herself for having judged him so poorly, rated him so low, that she could have knelt upon the floor and clasped his feet!  Yet must she strive for wisdom and calmness.

“Then how came you to tell me, Hugh, that which might well imperil not only my peace but your own happiness?”

“Mora,” said the Knight, “if I have done wrong, may our blessed Lady pardon me, and comfort you.  But I could not take my happiness knowing that it came to me by reason of a deception practised upon you.  Our love must have its roots in perfect truthfulness and trust.  Also you and I had together accepted the vision as divine.  I had kneeled in your sight and praised our blessed Lady for this especial grace vouchsafed on my behalf.  But now, knowing it to have been a sacrilegious fraud, every time you spoke with joy of the special grace, every time you blessed our Lady for her loving-kindness, I, by my silence, giving mute assent, should have committed sacrilege afresh.  Aye, and in that wondrous moment which you promised should soon come, when you would have said:  ’Take me!  I have been ever thine.  Our Lady hath kept me for thee!’ mine honour would have been smirched forever had I, keeping silence, taken advantage of thy belief in words which that old nun had herself invented, and put into the mouth of the blessed Virgin.  The Bishop held me selfish because I put mine honour before my need of thee.  He said I saw naught but mine own proud face, in the bright mirror of my silver shield.  But”—­the Knight held his right hand aloft, and spoke in solemn tones—­“methinks I see there the face of God, or the nearest I know to His face; and, behind Him, I see thy face, mine own beloved.  I needs must put this, which I owe to honour and to our mutual trust, before mine own content, and utter need of thee.  I should be shamed, did I do otherwise, to call thee wife of mine, to think of thee as mistress of my home, and of my heart the Queen.”

Mora’s hand had sought the Bishop’s letter; but now she let it lie concealed.  She could not dim the noble triumph of that moment, by any revelation of her previous knowledge.  Had Hugh failed, she must have produced the first letter.  Hugh having proved faithful, it might well wait.

A long silence fell between them.  Mora, fingering the cross, looked on it with unseeing eyes.  To Hugh it seemed that this token of her high office was becoming to her a thing of first importance.

“The dress is also here,” he said.

“What dress?” she questioned, starting.