"Not desolate, for in my loneliness was the hermit Ambrose who taught me many things and most of all, how to love him. So lived I in the greenwood, happy and content, until on a day this saintly Ambrose told me a woeful tale—so did I know this humble hermit for the noble Duke, my father."
"Thy father! The Duke! A hermit! Told he of—all his sorrows, my son?"
"All, reverend mother, and thereafter bade me beware the falsity of women."
The pale cheek of the Abbess grew suddenly suffused, the slim hand clenched rigid upon the crucifix at her bosom, but she stirred not nor lifted her sad gaze from the fire.
"Liveth thy father yet, my son?"
"'Tis so I pray God, lady."
"And—thy mother?"
"'Tis so I've heard."
"Pray you not for—for her also?"
"I never knew my mother, lady."