“The Lord Abbot declares that your marriage was no true marriage, my daughter, though why I do not understand, since the man was he whom your heart chose, and you were wed to him by an ordained priest before God’s altar and in presence of the congregation.”

“I care not what he says,” answered Cicely in a stubborn voice.  “If I am not a true wife, then no woman ever was.”

“Dear daughter,” answered Mother Matilda, “it is not for us unlearned women to question the wisdom of a holy Abbot who doubtless is inspired from on high.”

“If he is inspired it is not from on high, Mother.  Would God or His saints teach him to murder my father and my husband, to seize my heritage, or to hold my person in this gentle prison?  Such inspirations do not come from above, Mother.”

“Hush! hush!” said the Prioress, glancing round her nervously; “your woes have crazed you.  Besides, you have no proof.  In this world there are so many things that we cannot understand.  Being an abbot, how could he do wrong, although to us his acts seem wrong?  But let us not talk of these matters, of which, indeed, I only know from that rough-tongued Emlyn of yours, who, I am told, was not afraid to curse him terribly.  I was about to say that whatever may be the law of it, I hold your marriage good and true, and its issue, should such come to you, pure and holy, and night by night I will pray that it shall be crowned with Heaven’s richest blessings.”

“I thank you, dear Mother,” answered Cicely, as she rose and left her.

When she had gone the Prioress rose also, and, with a troubled face, began to walk up and down the refectory, for it was here that they had spoken together.  Truly she could not understand, for unless all these tales were false—­and how could they be false?—­this Abbot, whom her high-bred English nature had always mistrusted, this dark, able Spanish monk was no saint, but a wicked villain?  There must be some explanation.  It was only that she did not understand.

Soon the news spread throughout the Nunnery, and if the sisters had loved Cicely before, now they loved her twice as well.  Of the doubts as to the validity to her marriage, like their Prioress, they took no heed, for had it not been celebrated in a church?  But that a child was to be born among them—­ah! that was a joyful thing, a thing that had not happened for quite two hundred years, when, alas!—­so said tradition and their records—­there had been a dreadful scandal which to this day was spoken of with bated breath.  For be it known at once this Nunnery, whatever may or may not have been the case with some others, was one of which no evil could be said.