Madame dropped behind as the Bishop advanced, and Laure bowed before him.
“My child, I trust thou art found well in body?” said St. Nazaire, more solemnly than she had ever heard him speak.
“Yes, monseigneur,” was the subdued reply.
Now madame came up, and indicated a chair to the Bishop, who, after seeing her seated, sat down himself, while Laure remained on her feet in front of them. Then followed a pause, uncomfortable to all, terrifying to Laure, who was becoming hysterically nervous with dread. She dared not, however, break the silence; and with a convulsive sigh she folded her arms across her breast, and stood waiting for whatever was to come. Monseigneur regarded her closely and steadily, as if he were reading something that he wished to know of her, but at the same time he did not make her shrink from him. On the contrary, his expression brought the assurance that he had lost nothing of his old-time sympathy with human nature. His first question was unhesitatingly direct.
“Laure,” he said very quietly, “art thou bound by the marriage tie to this Bertrand Flammecœur?”
At the sound of the name Laure trembled, and her white face grew whiter still. “No,” she answered in a half-whisper, at the same time clenching her two hands till the nails pierced her flesh.
“And thou hast lived with him, under his name, since thy departure from the priory of the Holy Madeleine?”
Laure paused for a moment to steady her voice, and then answered huskily: “Until two months past.”
“And in that two months?”
“I have begged my way from where we were—hither.”