"I don't understand, my lord," said the prelate abruptly, suddenly convinced that more had happened than he knew. "I was only here just at the end, and . . . . what is it I can do?"
The abbot looked at him.
"That was the end," he said quietly. "Did you not hear the sentence?"
Monsignor shook his head. A kind of sickness seemed to rise from his heart and envelop him.
"I heard nothing," he said. "I came in during Dom Adrian's last speech."
The abbot licked his dry lips; there was a wondering sort of apprehensiveness in his eyes.
"That was the last formality," he said. "Sentence was given twenty minutes ago."
"And——"
The abbot bowed his head, plucking nervously at his cross.
"It has to go to Rome to be ratified," he said hurriedly. "There will be a week or two of delay. Dom Adrian refused any release. But . . . but he knows there is no hope."