are three!"

CHAPTER XXXV

IN THE ARBOUR OF GOLDEN ROSES

The next day dawned, clear and radiant; a perfect summer morning.

Mora awoke soon after five o'clock.

Notwithstanding the fatigue of the previous day, the strain and stress
of heart, and the late hour at which she had at length fallen asleep,
the mental habit of years overcame the physical need of further slumber.

Her first conscious thought was for the rope which worked over a pulley
through a hole in the wall of her cell, enabling her from, within to
ring the great bell in the passage, thus rousing the entire community.
It had been her invariable habit to do this herself. She liked the
nuns to feel that the call to begin a new day came to them from the
hand of their Prioress. Realising the difficulty of early rising,
especially after night vigils, it pleased her that her nuns should know
that the fact of the bell resounding through the Convent proved that
the Reverend Mother was already on her feet.

Yet now, looking toward the door, she could see no rope. And what
meant those sumptuous tapestry hangings?

She leapt from her couch, and gazed around her.

Why fell her hair about her, as a golden cloud?--that beautiful hair,
which in some Orders would have been shorn from her head; and, in this,
must ever be closely braided, covered, and never seen. Still
half-bewildered, she flung it back; gazing at the unfamiliar, yet
well-remembered, garments laid ready for her use.

Sometimes she had had such dreams as this--dreams in which she was back
in the world, wearing its garments, tasting its pleasures, looking
again upon forbidden things.

Why should she not now be dreaming?

Then a sound fell upon her ear; a sound, long forgotten, yet so
familiar that as she heard it, she felt herself a child at home
again--the soft, contented snoring of old Debbie, fast asleep.

Sound is ever more convincing than sight. The blind live in a world of
certainties. Not so, the deaf.

Mora needed not to turn and view the comely countenance of her old
nurse sleeping upon a couch in a corner. At sound of that soft purring
snore, she knew all she needed to know--knew she was no longer
Prioress, knew she had renounced her vows; knew that even now the
Convent was waking and wondering, as last night it must have marvelled
and surmised, and to-morrow would question and condemn; knew that this
was her wedding morn; that this robe of softest white, with jewelled