-discerns the right, and, choosing it, rejects the wrong. Should she
be satisfied that life with you is indeed God's will for her--and I
tell you honestly, it will take a miracle to bring this about--she will
come to you. But she will not come to you unless, in so doing, she is
choosing what to her is the harder part."

"The harder part!" exclaimed the Knight. "You forget, my lord, she
loves me."

"Do I forget?" replied the Bishop. "Have you found me given to
forgetting? The very fact that she loves you, is the heaviest factor
against you--just now. To such women there comes ever the instinctive
feeling, that that which would be sweet must be wrong, and the hard
path of renunciation the only right one. They climb not Zion's mount
to reach the crown. They turn and wend their way through Gethsemane to
Calvary, sure that thus alone can they at last inherit. And what can
we say? Are they not following in the footsteps of the Son of God? I
fear my nature turns another way. I incline to follow King David, or
Solomon in all his glory, chanting glad Songs of Ascent, from the
Palace on Mount Zion to the Temple on Mount Moriah. All things
harmonious, in sound, form, or colour, seem to me good and, therefore,
right. But long years in Italy have soaked me in the worship of the
beautiful, inextricably intermingled with the adoration of the Divine.
I mistrust mine own judgment, and I fear me"--said the Prelate, whose
gentle charity had won so many to religion--"I greatly fear me, I am
far from being Christlike. But I recognise the spirit of
self-crucifixion, when I see it. And the warning that I give you, is
not because I forget, but because I remember."

As the last words fell in solemn utterance from the Bishop's lips, the
silence without was broken by the loud clanging of the outer bell;
followed by hurrying feet in the courtyard below, the flare of torches
shining up upon the casements, and the unbarring of the gate.

"It must be close on midnight," said Hugh d'Argent; "a strange hour for
an arrival."

The banqueting hall, on the upper floor of the Palace, had casements at
the extreme end, facing the door, which gave upon the courtyard.

The Knight walked over to one of these casements standing open, kneeled
upon the high window-seat, and looked down.

"A horseman has ridden in," he said, "and ridden fast. His steed is
flecked with foam, and stands with spreading nostrils, panting. . . .
The rider has pas