“So be it,” answered Cicely. “God gave it; God save it. In God I put my trust. Murderer, leave me to make my peace with Him,” and she turned and walked away.
Now the Abbot and Emlyn were face to face.
“Do we really burn on Monday?” she asked.
“Without doubt, unless faggots will not take fire. Yet,” he added slowly, “if certain jewels should chance to be found and handed over, the case might be remitted to another Court.”
“And the torment prolonged. My Lord Abbot, I fear that those jewels will never be found.”
“Well, then you burn—slowly, perhaps, for much rain has fallen of late and the wood is green. They say the death is dreadful.”
“Doubtless one day you will find it so, Clement Maldonado, here or hereafter. But of that we will talk together when all is done—of that and many other things. I mean before the Judgment-seat of God. Nay, nay, I do not threaten after your fashion—it shall be so. Meanwhile I ask the boon of a dying woman. There are two whom I would see—the Prioress Matilda, in whose charge I desire to leave a certain secret, and Thomas Bolle, a lay-brother in your Abbey, a man who once engaged himself to me in marriage. For your own sake, deny me not these favours.”
“They should be granted readily enough were it in my power, but it is not,” answered the Abbot, looking at her curiously, for he thought that to them she might tell what she had refused to him—the hiding-place of the jewels, which afterwards he could wring out.
“Why not, my Lord Abbot?”
“Because the Prioress has gone hence, secretly, upon some journey of her own, and Thomas Bolle has vanished away I know not where. If they, or either of them, return ere Monday you shall see them.”