and prudent babe."

"Nay, my Lord Bishop," cried Mora, with a sharp decision of tone which
made it please him to imagine that, should he look up from the peach,
he would see the severe lines of the wimple and scapulary: "you and I
were the wise and prudent, arguing for and against, according to our
own theories and reason. But to this babe, our Lady vouchsafed a clear
vision."

"Tell me of it," said the Bishop, splitting his peach and removing the
stone which he carefully washed, and slipped into his sash. The Bishop
always kept peach stones, and planted them.

She told him. She began at the beginning, and told him all, to the
minutest detail; the full description of Hugh--the amazingly correct
repetition, in the vision, of the way in which she and Hugh had
actually kneeled together before the shrine of the blessed Virgin, of
their very words and actions; and, finally, the sublime and gracious
tenderness of our Lady's pronouncement, clearly heard at the close of
the vision, by the old lay-sister: "Take her; she hath been ever thine.
I have but kept her for thee."

"What say you to that, Reverend Father?" exclaimed Mora, concluding.

"I scarce know what to say," replied the Bishop. "For lack of anything
better, I fall back upon my favourite motto, and I say: 'Love never
faileth.'"

Now, generally, she delighted in the exceeding aptness of the Bishop's
quotations; but this time it seemed to Mora that his favourite motto
bore no sort of relevance.

She felt, with a chill of disappointment and a sense of vexation, that
the Bishop's mind had been so intent upon the fruit, that he had not
fully taken in the wonder of the vision.

"It has naught to do with love, my lord," she said, rather coldly;
"unless you mean the divine lovingkindness of our blessed Lady."

"Precisely," replied the Bishop, leaning back in his seat, and at
length looking straight into Mora's earnest eyes. "The divine
lovingkindness of our blessed Lady never faileth."

"You agree, my lord, that the vision shed a clear light upon all my
perplexities?"

"Absolutely clear," replied the Bishop. "The love which arranged the
vision saw to that. Revelations, my daughter, are useless unless they
are explicit. Had our Lady merely waved her marble hand, instead of
stooping to take yours and place it in that of the Knight, you might
have thought she was waving him away, and bidding you to remain. If
her marble hand moved at all, it is well that