fiendish woman! Then plucking up his gown with
his left hand for fear of being tripped up by it he rushed out of the
room.

The others, still keeping their faces averted from her, followed at a
more dignified pace; and seeing them depart she cried after them: Go,
Fathers, and tell your bishop that if he had not run away so soon he
would have been rewarded for his insolence by a slap in the face.

This outburst on her part caused no lasting break in her relations with
the Church. It was to her merely an incident in her long day's toil in
her master's fields--a quarrel she had had with an overseer; while he,
on his side, even before he recovered the use of his injured arm,
thought it best for their souls, as well as for the interests of the
Church, to say no more about it. Her great works of expiation were
accordingly continued. But the time at length arrived for her to take
her long-desired rest before facing the unknown dreaded future. She was
not old in years, but remorse and a deep settled melancholy and her
frequent fierce wrestlings with her own rebellious nature as with an
untamed dangerous animal chained to her had made her old. Furthermore,
she had by now well-nigh expended all her possessions and wealth, even
to the gems she had once prized and then thrust away out of sight for
many years, and which her maid Editha had rejected with scorn, saying
they were no more to her than pebbles from the brook.

Once more at Wherwell, she entered the Abbey, and albeit she took the
veil herself she was not under the same strict rule as her sister nuns.
The Abbess herself retired to Winchester and ruled the convent from that
city, while Elfrida had the liberty she desired, to live and do as she
liked in her own rooms and attend prayers and meals only when inclined
to do so. There, as always, since Edward's death, her life was a
solitary one, and in the cold season she would have her fire of logs and
sit before it as in the old days in the castle, brooding ever on her
happy and unhappy past and on the awful future, the years and centuries
of suffering and purification.

It was chiefly this thought of the solitariness of that future state,
that companionless way, centuries long, that daunted her. Here in this
earthly state, darkened as it was, there were yet two souls she could
and constantly did hold communion with--Editha still on earth, though
not with her, and Edward in heaven; but in that dreadful desert to which
she