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Mary Antony's posy of weeds, offered, according to promise, at the Virgin's shrine, took on, in that silver splendour, the semblance of lilies and roses. The Prioress knelt long, with clasped hands and bowed head, as white and as motionless as the marble before her. But at length she lifted her face, and broke into low pleading.
And the Bishop's heart melted to tenderness as she whispered the story, and he realised the greatness of the devotion which had gone forward, without a thought of self, in the bold endeavour to bring happiness to the Prioress she loved, yet the anxious conscience, which now trembled at the thought of that which the fearless heart had done.
Lifting her eyes again for a moment, Mother Hilda answered that it should be as the Prioress wished that she would do her best to instruct Teresa; and she moved away slowly, the Prioress not seeking to detain her any longer in her room. Next day in the novitiate Mother Hilda explained to Evelyn how the centre of their life was the perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament exposed on the altar.
And yet a third time, in a low whisper of horror, passing her left hand across her eyes, as if to clear from her outer vision some nightmare of the inner mind: "Hugh!" The silent Knight still made no answer; but he flung aside the clinging robes, stepped from out them, and strode forward, both arms outstretched. "Back!" cried the Prioress. But her hand had left the hilt of the dagger.
Upon which the Prioress rent the mandate from top to bottom, then across and again across; flung the pieces upon the floor, and set her foot upon them. "Thus I answer," she cried, "your attempt, my lord, to induce the Pope to release me from vows which I hold to be eternally sacred and binding.
The Prioress spoke with hesitation, and Evelyn guessed that the nuns were thinking of their present necessities. "I can let you have a hundred pounds easily, and I could let you have more if it were not " The pause was sufficiently dramatic to cause the nuns to press her to go on speaking, saying that they must know they were not taking money which she needed for herself.
The Prioress listened with outward gravity, striving to conceal all signs of the inward mirth which seized and shook her. But more than once she had to turn her face from the peering eyes of Mary Antony, striving anxiously to gather whether her chronicle of sins was placing her outside the pale of possible forgiveness. The Prioress did not hasten the recital.
John were married in the hall of Master Lorimer's house by a trusty priest of Barnet, and in the afternoon, when the thanksgiving worship at the church had been gone through, they started in the waggon for the first stage of the journey, to be overtaken at the halting-place by the Prioress and Master Lorimer, who had had to ride into London to finish some business.
Prioress Agnes, who had already broken her fast, sat meantime with the favourite hawk on her wrist and a large dog beside her, feeding them alternately with the bones of the grouse. 'Come, tell us all, sweet Nan! Where wast thou in that untimely snow-storm? In a cave, starved with cold, eh? 'I was safe in a cabin with a kind old gammer. 'Eh! And how cam'st thou there? Wandering thither?
There are two recumbent figures of the 14th cent., a knight and a lady, at the W. end of the S. aisle; but the most remarkable feature of the building is a still earlier effigy, much defaced, within a niche in the exterior wall of the E. end. It seems to represent a bishop, since there are traces of a crosier, though some have taken it for a prioress.
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