"The old creature," continued Mother Sub-Prioress, eyeing the Bishop's meditative hand suspiciously, "then betook herself to the outer gates, told the porteress that she had your orders, Reverend Father, to report to you if the Reverend Mother again elected to pass a night in vigil and in fasting, because you and she—you and she forsooth!—were made anxious by the too constant fasting and the too prolonged vigils of the Reverend Mother. Mary Mark very properly refused to allow the old"——
"Lay-sister," interposed the Bishop, sternly.
Mother Sub-Prioress gasped; then made obeisance:—"the old lay-sister to leave the Convent. Whereupon Sister Antony sent Mary Mark to deliver the Reverend Mother's message to me, bribing her, with the promise of a gift from you, my lord, to leave her the key. When the porteress returned, Mary Antony was gone, having left the great doors ajar, and the key within the lock. She has not been seen since. Did she reach the Palace, and speak with you, my lord? Is she now in safety at the Palace?"
"Nay," said the Bishop gravely. "Sister Mary Antony hath not been seen at the Palace."
"Alack-a-day!" exclaimed Sister Abigail; "she will have fallen by the way, and perished! She was too old to face the world or attempt to reach the city."
"Peace, girl!" commanded the Sub-Prioress. "Thy comments and thy wailings mend not the matter, and do but incense the Lord Bishop."
Nothing could have appeared less incensed than the Bishop's benign countenance. But he had spoken sternly to Mother Sub-Prioress, therefore she endeavoured to put herself in the right by charging him, at the first opportunity, with unreasonable irritation.
The Bishop reassured Sister Abigail, with a smile; then, pointing toward the closed door: "Proceed with your recital, Mother Sub-Prioress," he said. "You have as yet given me no proof confirming your belief that the Prioress is within the cell."
"When the absence of Mary Antony became known, my lord," continued Mother Sub-Prioress, "we felt it right to acquaint the Reverend Mother with the old lay-sister's flight. I, myself, knocked upon this door; but the only reply I received was the continuous low chanting of prayers, from within; not so much a clear chanting, as a murmur; and whenever, during the night, nuns listened at the door, or ventured again to tap, the sound of the Reverend Mother's voice, reciting psalms or prayers, reached them. As you may remember, my lord, the ground upon the other side of the building is on a lower level than the cloister lawn. The windows of the Reverend Mother's cell are therefore raised above the shrubbery and it is not possible to see into the chamber. But Sister Mary Rebecca, who went round after dark, noted that the Reverend Mother had lighted her tapers and drawn her curtains. This morning the light is extinguished, the curtains are drawn back, and the casement flung open. Moreover at the usual hour for rising, the Reverend Mother rang the bell, as is her custom, to waken the nuns—rang it from within her cell, by means of this rope and pulley."
"Ah," said the Bishop.