"The damsel," she continued, returning to the present, "is evidently in sore perplexity. She has had much talk with her uncle, the revered archdeacon. Perchance you know her. Her name is--"
At this moment the kneeling girl, aroused by the sound of whispering behind her, looked round, and perceiving the abbess, rose and approached to make an obeisance. The sad face, marble-like in its pallor, which appeared above the black robes of a novice, was that of Aliva de Pateshulle.
CHAPTER VI.
A PENITENT.
Fulke de Breauté had been in earnest when he had allowed his wife to go to the retreat at Elstow, on condition that she should try to set matters straight between himself and the Church; and she had no sooner gone than he set to work to think matters over, and to consider how best he could reinstate himself in the ecclesiastical good graces which he felt he had entirely forfeited, but, however, without expending any of his worldly wealth in restitution or reparation.
In those days there were two acknowledged ways of making peace with offended ecclesiastical authority. One of these was the endowing, building, or otherwise pecuniarily assisting religious foundations, especially monasteries.
But Fulke had no notion of spending his ill-gotten gain in such a manner.
There was another plan which he could adopt, and for which he had the highest precedent. Just half a century before the date of our story, no less a personage than the King of England himself, Henry II., had submitted to the penance of corporal punishment in the chapter-house of Canterbury, in expiation of words spoken in hasty anger which had indirectly brought about the death of an archbishop.
The idea seized Fulke of a similar form of reconciliation with Holy Church.
Accordingly, the day after his wife's departure he set off for the abbey of St. Alban. His dress was of studied simplicity. He wore no armour, but was clad in the ordinary long robe or gown which was worn in civil life by all above the rank of labourers and manual workers, and a plain cloak, fastened by a buckle or brooch on his right shoulder, fell over his left side.