"Within two hours, he should be here."
"Comes he alone, my lord?" asked Mistress Deborah.
"Nay," replied the Bishop, "the Countess of Norelle, a very noble lady
to whom the Knight is betrothed, rides hither with him."
"The saints be praised!" exclaimed the old woman, and turned away to
hide her tears.
Whilst his body-servant prepared a bath and laid out his robes, the
Bishop mounted to the ramparts and watched the gold fade in the west.
He glanced at the river below, threading its way through the pasture
land; at the billowy masses of trees; at the gay parterre, bright with
summer flowers. Then he looked long in the direction of the city from
which he had come.
During his strenuous ride, the slow tramp of the men-at-arms, had
sounded continually in his ears; the outline of that helpless figure,
lying at full length upon the stretcher, had been ever before his eyes.
He could not picture the arrival at the hostel, the removal of the
covering, the uprising of the Prioress to face life anew, enfolded in
the arms of her lover.
As in a weary dream, in which the mind can make no headway, but returns
again and yet again to the point of distress, so, during the entire
ride, the Bishop had followed that stretcher through the streets of
Worcester city, until it seemed to him as if, before the pall was
lifted, the long-limbed, graceful form beneath it would have stiffened
in death.
"A corpse for a bride! A corpse for a bride!" the hoofs of the black
mare Shulamite had seemed to beat out upon the road.
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