The services had not yet commenced. Salome bent forward with all the interest and curiosity of a recluse, to look, for a moment, upon the strangers.
She gave but one glance through the screen, and then suddenly, with a low cry, she sank back upon her seat.
"What is the matter, my daughter? Are you ill?" inquired the mother-superior, in a whisper.
Salome lifted up a face ashen pale with dismay, and gasped:
"I have seen him! I have seen him! He is there—there in the congregation below!"
"Who?" inquired the abbess, in vague alarm.
"My husband?—yet, no; oh, Heaven! not my husband, but the Duke of Hereward!"