Yet he carried out his plan, and kept to his undertaking, though here, in the calm atmosphere of the crypt, holy chanting descending from above, the remembrance still with him of the aloofness of those stately white figures gliding between the pillars in the distance, he faced the madness of his hopes, and the mournful prospect of a life of loneliness.

Presently he arose, crossed the crypt, and took up his position behind a pillar to the right of the exit from the winding stair.

The chanting ceased.  Vespers were over.

He heard the sound of soft footsteps drawing nearer.

The White Ladies were coming.

They came.

The Knight was not kept long in suspense.  The Prioress walked first.  Her face was hidden, but her height and carriage revealed her to her lover.  She looked neither to right nor left but, turning away from the pillar behind which the Knight stood concealed, crossed to the steps leading down to the subterranean way, and so passed swiftly out of sight.

The Knight stood motionless until all had appeared, and had vanished once more from view.

One, tall but ungainly, crooked of body, and doubtless short of vision, missed her way among the columns and passed perilously near to the Knight.  With his long arm, he could have clasped her.  How old Antony would have chuckled, could she but have known!  “Sister Mary Rebecca embraced by the Knight of the Bloody Vest?  Nay then; the Saints forbid!”

The stretcher, borne by four men-at-arms, passed out from the Cathedral.

The Knight walked beside it, with bent head, and eyes upon the ground.

As it passed through the Precincts, the Lord Bishop himself rode out on his white palfrey, on his way to the Nunnery at Whytstone.

The Knight, being downhearted, did not lift his eyes.

The Bishop looked, kindly, upon the stretcher and upon the Knight’s dark face.

The Bishop had known Hugh d’Argent as a boy.

He grieved to see him thus in sorrow.

Yet the Bishop smiled as he rode on.

Perhaps he did not put much faith in the efficacy of relics, for so heavily bandaged a broken head as that upon the stretcher.

For there was a whimsical tenderness about the Bishop’s smile.

CHAPTER XIX

THE BISHOP PUTS ON HIS BIRETTA

Symon, Lord Bishop of Worcester, having received a letter from the Prioress of the White Ladies, praying him for an interview at his leisure, sent back at once a most courtly and gracious answer, that he would that same day give himself the pleasure of visiting the Reverend Mother, at the Nunnery, an hour after Vespers.

The great gates were thrown open, and the Bishop rode his palfrey into the courtyard.

The Prioress herself met him at the door and, kneeling, kissed his ring; then led him through the lower hall, where the nuns knelt to receive his blessing, and up the wide staircase, to the privacy of her own cell.