The silver streaks of the aurora paled before soaring shafts of gold, bright heralds of the rising sun.

Then from the Convent garden trilled softly the first notes, poignant but passing sweet, of the robin’s song.

CHAPTER XXV

MARY ANTONY RECEIVES THE BISHOP

The morning after the return from Rome of the Bishop’s messenger, the old lay-sister, Mary Antony, chanced to be crossing the Convent courtyard, when there came a loud knocking on the outer gates.

Mary Antony, hastening, thrust aside the buxom porteress, and herself opened the guichet, and looked out.

The Lord Bishop, mounted upon his white palfrey, waited without; Brother Philip in attendance.

What a bewildering surprise!  What a fortunate thing, thought old Antony, that she should chance to be there to deal with such an emergency.

Never did the Bishop visit the Nunnery, without sending a messenger beforehand to know whether the Prioress could see him, stating the exact hour of his proposed arrival; so that, when the great doors were flung wide and the Bishop rode into the courtyard, the Prioress would be standing at the top of the steps to receive him; Mother Sub-Prioress in attendance in the background; the other holy ladies upon their knees within the entrance; Mary Antony, well out of sight, yet where peeping was possible, because she loved to see the Reverend Mother kneel and kiss the Bishop’s ring, rising to her feet again without pause, making of the whole movement one graceful, deep obeisance.  After which, Mary Antony, still peeping, greatly loved to see the Prioress mount the wide, stone staircase with the Bishop; each shewing a courtly deference to the other.

(One of Mary Antony’s most exalted dreams of heaven, was of a place where she should sit upon a jasper seat and see the Reverend Mother and the great Lord Bishop mounting together interminable flights of golden stairs; while Mother Sub-Prioress and Sister Mary Rebecca looked through black bars, somewhere down below, whence they would have a good view of Mary Antony on her jasper seat, but no glimpse of the golden stairs or of the radiant figures which she watched ascending.)

So much for the usual visits of the Bishop, when everything was in readiness for his reception.

But now, all unexpected, the Bishop waited without the gate, and Mary Antony had to deal with this emergency.

Crying to the porteress to open wide, she hastened to the steps. . . .  It was impossible to summon the Reverend Mother in time. . . .  The Lord Bishop must not be kept waiting! . . .  Even now the great doors were rolling back.

Mary Antony mounted the six steps; then turned in the doorway.

The Lord Bishop must be received.  There was nobody else to do it.  She would receive the Lord Bishop!

As she saw him riding in upon Icon, blessing the porteress as he passed, she remembered how she had ridden round the river meadow as the Bishop.  Now she must play her part as the Prioress.