Her heart was heavy indeed.
She had angered her old friend, Symon of Worcester. After being
infinitely patient, when he might well have had cause for wrath, he had
suddenly taken a sterner tone, and departed in a certain aloofness,
leaving her with the fear that she had lost him, also, beyond recall.
Thus she walked in loneliness and sorrow.
As she passed up the steps into the cloisters, she noted that Mary Antony
was not in her accustomed place.
Slightly wondering, and half unconsciously explaining to herself that the
old lay-sister had probably for some reason gone forward with the
Sub-Prioress, the Prioress moved down the now empty passage and entered
her own cell.
On the threshold she paused, astonished.
In front of the shrine of the Madonna, knelt Mary Antony in a kind of
trance, hands clasped, eyes fixed, lips parted, the colour gone from her
cheeks, yet a radiance upon her face, like the after-glow of a vision of
exceeding glory.
She appeared to be wholly unconscious of the presence of the Prioress,
who recovering from her first astonishment, closed the door, and coming
forward laid her hand gently upon the old woman's shoulder.
Mary Antony's eyes remained fixed, but her lips moved incessantly.
Bending over her, the Prioress could make out disjointed sentences.
"Gone! . . . But it was at our Lady's bidding. . . . Flown? Ah, gay
little Knight of the Bloody Vest! Nay, it must have been the archangel
Gabriel, or maybe Saint George, in shining armour.
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