"Home," whispered Mora. "Blessèd Virgin I thank thee for sending me home."
"Nay," answered a voice within her. "I sent thee not home. I gave thee to him to whom thou didst belong. He hath brought thee home. What said the vision? 'Take her. She is thine own. I have but kept her for thee.'"
Yet Hugh knew naught of this gracious message—knew naught of the vision which had given her to him. Until to-night she had felt it impossible to tell him of it. Now she longed that he should share with her the wonder.
She sought her couch, but sleep would not come. The moonlight was too bright; the room too sweetly familiar. Moreover it seemed but yesterday that she had parted from Hugh, in such an ecstasy of love and sorrow, up on the battlements.
A great desire seized her to mount to those battlements, and to stand again just where she had stood when she bade him farewell.
She rose.
Among the garments put ready for her use, chanced to be the robe of sapphire velvet which she had worn on that night.
She put it on; with jewels at her breast and girdle. Then, with the mantle of ermine falling from her shoulders, and her beautiful hair covering her as a veil, she left her chamber, passed softly along the passage, found the winding stair, and mounted to the ramparts.
As she stepped out from the turret stairway, she exclaimed at the sublime beauty of the scene before her; the sleeping world at midnight, bathed in the silvery light of the moon; the shadows of the firs, lying like black bars across the road to the Castle gate.
"There I watched him ride away," she said, with a sweep of her arm toward the road, "watched, until the dark woods swallowed him. And here"—with a sweep toward the turret—"here, we parted."