United States or Saint Kitts and Nevis ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It wasn't exactly a shrine, even if there was a crimson cushion conveniently disposed before it, and if Mary for a while said her prayers there instead of in the old childish way at her bedside, and if she genuflected when she passed it, that was her own affair.
Boots cheeped unseen in the arches, sibilant whispers smote the silence, pew-doors creaked, and from far corners of the church violent coughing sounded with muffled reverberations. Mary Lou would have slipped into the very last pew, but Virginia led the way up up up in the darkness, nearer and nearer the altar, with its winking red light, and genuflected before one of the very first pews.
They advanced two and two, stopped in the middle of the grating, turned to the altar and genuflected, then each bowed to her neighbour, and so to the end of this procession of women in black, only brightened by the whiteness of the head-band and the collar, and the gilt spot of the little monstrance on the breast.
To the Gray Nunnery went we, and saw pictures and altars and saints and candlesticks, and little dove-cot floors of galleries jutting out, where a few women crossed, genuflected, and mumbled, and an old woman came out of a door above one of them, and asked the people below not to talk so loud, because they disturbed the worshippers; but the people kept talking, and presently she came out again, and repeated her request, with a little of the Inquisition in her tones and gestures, no more than was justifiable under the circumstances: but she looked straight at me; and O old woman! it was not I that talked, nor my party.
Striving against her agitation the postulant walked up the nave into the choir, and knelt on the left before a large taper, her mother and sister on either side as bridesmaids. Dom Etienne genuflected to the altar, mounted the steps, and sat down in a red velvet arm-chair, placed on the highest step. Then one of the priests conducted the girl, who knelt alone, before the monk.
The priest genuflected, the bell sounded repeatedly and, amid that great hush, thrice three notes of the great church-bell droned through the church and rang out over the distant fields. Outside, it was all blue and sunshine and silence; everything was bowed in anxious expectation; it was as though there were nothing erect and alive in the world except that little church and that bell.
She was filled with an almost irresistible longing to throw herself into his arms and confess her quickening love. And that she knew too well she must not do. At last she lifted her bowed head, and rising slowly to her feet, she genuflected before the altar. Then she turned and slipped through a door of a small side chapel, into which the black-bearded man closely followed.
Ceremony thereafter became her relief and all she cared about. She would draw out her ring and look at it, then kiss it. Then it must be lifted up to the length of its chain as she had seen the priest elevate the Host at Mass; she genuflected and fell prone in mute adoration, crying all the time with tears streaming down her face. She was at this time like to dissolve in tears!
All, now prostrate, their faces buried in their hands, were praying, and this lasted long; then the sound of the little hand-bell was heard, everyone rose, genuflected to the altar, and in silent file the monks disappeared through the door in the apse.
I will obtain the necessary dispensations from the Archbishop as well as all facilities regarding the banns, confession-tickets, etc." Hippolyte, although he thought the combination a little dangerous, agreed to it, a good deal flattered, at bottom. "I will go in a short coat," he said. He went in a frock coat with white gloves and varnished shoes, and he genuflected. "Politeness demands. . . ."
Word Of The Day