The distraught nun lay upon the
floor of her cell in an abandonment of frantic weeping. She imitated
the galloping of a horse with her hands and feet, a ride of some sort
evidently being in her mind. At length she lifted a swollen
countenance, crying that her lover had come to save her."
The Knight clenched his teeth, in despair. Almost, he and this
fearsome nun had arrived at Warwick, and she was lifting a swollen
countenance to him that he might embrace it.
Yet Mora well knew that he had not come for any Seraphine! Mora might
deny herself to him; but she would not foist another upon him. Only,
alas! this grave and Reverend Prioress of whom the Bishop spoke, hardly
seemed one with the woman of his desire; she who, but three evenings
before, had yielded her lips to his, clasping her arms around him;
loving, even while she denied him.
The Bishop's eyes were again upon the letter.
"The Prioress," he said, "with her usual instinctive sense of the
helpfulness of outward surroundings, and desiring, with a fine justice,
to give Seraphine--and her lover--every possible advantage, arranged
that the conversation should take place in the Nunnery garden, in a
secluded spot where they could not be overheard, yet where the sunshine
glinted, through overhanging branches, flecking, in golden patches, the
soft turf; where birds carolled, and spread swift wings; where white
clouds chased one another across the blue sky; in fact, my son," said
the Bishop, suddenly looking up, "where all Nature sang aloud of
liberty and nonrestraint.
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