“Can I not walk alone,” asked the Knight, brusquely; “returning you the key by messenger?”

“Nay,” said the Prioress, “I dare run no risks.  So quickly rumours are afloat.  To-morrow, this strange hour must be a dream; and you and I alone, the dreamers.  Now, while I go and make safe the way, put you on again the robe and hood.  When I return and beckon, follow silently.”

The Prioress passed out, closing the door behind her.

CHAPTER XIII

“SEND HER TO ME!”

The Prioress stood for a moment outside the closed door.  The peaceful silence of the passage helped her to the outward calm which must be hers before she could bring herself to face her nuns.

Moving slowly to the farther end, she unlocked the cell of Sister Mary Seraphine, feeling a shamed humility that she should have made so sure she had to deal with “Wilfred,” and have thought such scorn of him and Seraphine.  Alas!  The wrong deeds of those they love, oft humble the purest, noblest spirits into the soiling dust.

Next, the Prioress herself rang the Refectory bell.

The hour for the evening meal was long passed; the nuns hastened out, readily.

As they trooped toward the stairs leading down to the Refectory, they saw their Prioress, very pale, very erect, standing with her back to the door of her chamber.

Each nun made a genuflexion as she passed; and to each, the Prioress slightly inclined her head.

To Sister Mary Rebecca, who kneeled at once, she spoke:  “I come not to the meal this evening.  In the absence of Mother Sub-Prioress, you will take my place.”

“Yes, Reverend Mother,” said Sister Mary Rebecca, meekly, and kissed the hem of the robe of the Prioress; then rising, hastened on, charmed to have a position of authority, however temporary.

When all had passed, the Prioress went into the cloisters, walked round them; looked over into the garden, observing every possible place from which prying eyes might have sight of the way from the passage to the crypt entrance.  But the garden, already full of purple shadows, was left to the circling swifts.  The robin sang an evening song from the bough, of the pieman’s tree.

The Prioress returned along the passage, looking into every cell.  Each door stood open wide; each cell was empty.  The sick nuns were on a further passage, round the corner, beyond the Refectory stairs.  Yet she passed along this also, making sure that the door of each occupied cell was shut.

Standing motionless at the top of the Refectory steps, she could hear the distant clatter of platters, the shuffling feet of the lay-sisters as they carried the dishes to and from the kitchens; and, above it all, the monotonous voice of Sister Mary Rebecca reading aloud to the nuns while they supped.

Then the Prioress took down one of the crypt lanterns and lighted it.