"Why this talk of earthly loves, my Lord Bishop, in a place where all
earthly love has been renounced and forgotten?"
The Bishop, seeing those trembling lips, ignored the hard tones, and
answered, very tenderly, with a simple directness which scorned all
evasion:
"Because, my daughter, I am here to plead for Hugh."
CHAPTER XXVII
THE WOMAN AND HER CONSCIENCE
"For Hugh?" said the Prioress. And then again, in low tones of
incredulous amazement, "For Hugh! What know you of Hugh, my lord?"
The Bishop looked steadfastly at the Prioress, and replied with
exceeding gravity and earnestness:
"I know that in breaking your solemn troth to him, you are breaking a
very noble heart; and that in leaving his home desolate, you are
robbing him not only of his happiness but also of his faith. Men are
apt to rate our holy religion, not by its theories, but by the way in
which it causeth us to act in our dealings with them. If you condemn
Hugh to sit beside his hearth, through the long years, a lonely,
childless man, you take the Madonna from his home; if you take your
love from him, I greatly fear lest you should also rob him of his
belief in the love of God. I do not say that these things should be
so; I say that we must face the fact that thus they are. And
remember--between a man and woman of noble birth, each with a stainless
escutcheon, each believing the other to be the soul of honour, a broken
troth is no light matter.
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