“Ah! yes, but I mean, what bishop or abbot?”
“Is the seal of the servant worth more than that of the Master?”
“I would know, Father,” urged Philippa.
The monk smiled. “Archbishop Bradwardine,” he said.
“Then Ashridge is a Dominican house? I know not that vicinage.”
“Men give us another name,” responded the monk slowly, “which I see you would know. Be it so. They call us—Boni-Homines.”
“But I thought,” said Philippa, looking bewilderedly into his face, “I thought those were very evil men. And Archbishop Bradwardine was a very holy man—almost a saint.”
A faint ironical smile flitted for a moment over the monk’s grave lips. The gravity was again unbroken the next instant.
“A very holy man,” he repeated. “He walked with God; and he is not, for God took him. Ay, took him away from the evil to come, where he should vex his righteous soul no more by unlawful deeds—where the alloyed gold of worldly greatness, which men would needs braid over the pure ermine of his life, should soil and crush it no more.”
He spoke rather to himself than to Philippa: and his eyes had a far-away look in them, as he lifted his head and gazed from the window over the moorland.