But there was one person in especial to whom it was felt the news ought to be sent. The Prior despatched no meaner member of the Order, but went himself to tell the dark tidings at Romsey.
He pleaded hard for a private interview with the Countess, but the reigning Abbess of Romsey was a great stickler for rule, and she decided that it was against precedent, and therefore propriety, that one of her nuns should be thus singled out from the rest. The announcement must be made in the usual way, to the whole convent, at vespers.
So, in the well-known tones of the Prior of Ashridge,—some time the Earl’s confessor, and his frequent visitor,—with the customary request to pray for the repose of the dead, to the ears of Mother Margaret, as she knelt in her stall with the rest, came the sound of the familiar name of Edmund, Earl of Cornwall.
Very tender and pathetic was the tone in which the intimation was given. The heart of the Prior himself was so wrung that he could not imagine such a feeling as indifference in that of the woman who had been the dearest thing earth held for that dead man. But if he looked down the long row of black, silent figures for any sign or sound, he looked in vain. There was not even a trembling of Mother Margaret’s black veil as her voice rose untroubled in the response with all the rest—
“O Jesu dulcis! O Jesu pie!
O Jesu, Fili Maria!
Dona eis requiem.”
In the recreation-time which followed, the Prior sought out Mother Margaret. He found her without difficulty, seated on a form at the side of the room, talking to a sister nun, and he caught a few words of the conversation as he approached.
“I assure thee, Sister Regina, it is quite a mistake. Mother Wymarca told me distinctly that the holy Mother gave Sister Maud an unpatched habit, and it is all nonsense in her to say there was a patch on the elbow.”
The Prior bit his lips, but he restrained himself, and sat down, reverently saluted by both nuns as he did so. Was she trying to hide her feelings? thought he.
“Sister Margaret, I brought you tidings,” he said, as calmly as was in him.
The nun turned upon him a pair of cold, steel-blue eyes, as calm and irresponsive as if he had brought her no tidings whatever.