"
"Alas!" said the Bishop. "Would that I had known she would have
whereby to explain away thy memory of that which I had said."
Yet the Bishop spoke perfunctorily; he spoke as one who, even while
speaking, muses upon other matters. For, within his secret soul, he
was fighting the hardest temptation yet faced by him, in the whole
history of his love for Mora.
By rapid transition of mind, he was back on the seat in the garden of
the White Ladies' Nunnery, left there by Mary Antony while she went to
fetch the Reverend Mother. He was looking up the sunny lawn toward the
cloisters, from out the shade of the great beech tree. Presently he
saw the Prioress coming, tall and stately, her cross of office gleaming
upon her breast, her sweet eyes alight with welcome. And at once they
were talking as they always talked together--he and she--each word
alive with its very fullest meaning; each thought springing to meet the
thought which matched it.
Next he saw himself again on that same seat, looking up the lawn to the
sunlit cloisters; realising that never again would the Prioress come to
greet him; facing for the first time the utter loneliness, the
irreparable loss to himself, of that which he had accomplished for Hugh
and Mora.
The Bishop's immeasurable loss had been Hugh's infinite gain. And now
that Hugh seemed bent upon risking his happiness, the positions were
reversed. Would not his loss, if he persisted, be the Bishop's gain?
How easy to meet her on the road, a few miles from Worcester; to
proceed, with much pomp and splendour, to the White Ladies' Nunnery; to
bid them throw wide the great gates; to ride in and, then and there,
reinstate Mora as Prioress, announcing that the higher service upon
which the Holy Father had sent her had been duly accomplished.
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