"Hugh, it seems hard that I should clip your splendid wings; but—oh, Hugh! Think you the heart of a nun can ever become again as the heart of other women?"
"Heaven forbid!" said the Knight, fervently, thinking of Eleanor and
Alfrida.
And, as leaving the arbour they walked together over the lawn, she smiled, remembering, how that morning the Bishop had answered the same question in precisely the same words. Whatever Father Gervaise might have said, the Bishop and the Knight were agreed!
Yet she wished, somewhat wistfully, that this most dear and loyal
Knight had taken her hands when she held them out.
She would have liked to feel the strong clasp of his upon them.
Possibly our Lady, who knoweth the heart of a woman, had guided the
Knight in this matter also.
CHAPTER XLI
WHAT THE BISHOP REMEMBERED
Symon, Bishop of Worcester, sat in his library, in the cool of the day.
He was weary, with a weariness which surpassed all his previous experience of weariness, all his imaginings as to how weary, in body and spirit, a man could be, yet continue to breathe and think.