"The old _creature_," continued Mother Sub-Prioress, eyeing the
Bishop's meditative hand suspiciously, "then betook herself to the
outer gates, told the porteress that she had your orders, Reverend
Father, to report to you if the Reverend Mother again elected to pass a
night in vigil and in fasting, because you and she--you and _she_
forsooth!--were made anxious by the too constant fasting and the too
prolonged vigils of the Reverend Mother. Mary Mark very properly
refused to allow the old"----

"Lay-sister," interposed the Bishop, sternly.

Mother Sub-Prioress gasped; then made obeisance:--"the old lay-sister
to leave the Convent. Whereupon Sister Antony sent Mary Mark to
deliver the Reverend Mother's message to me, bribing her, with the
promise of a gift from you, my lord, to leave her the key. When the
porteress returned, Mary Antony was gone, having left the great doors
ajar, and the key within the lock. She has not been seen since. Did
she reach the Palace, and speak with you, my lord? Is she now in
safety at the Palace?"

"Nay," said the Bishop gravely. "Sister Mary Antony hath not been seen
at the Palace."

"Alack-a-day!" exclaimed Sister Abigail; "she will have fallen by the
way, and perished! She was too old to face the world or attempt to
reach the city."

"Peace, girl!" commanded the Sub-Prioress. "Thy comments and thy
wailings mend not the matter, and do but incense the Lord Bishop."

Nothing could have appeared less incensed than the Bishop's benign
countenance. But he had spoken sternly to Mother Sub-Prioress,
therefore she endeavoured to put herself in the right by charging him,
at the first opportunity, with unreasonable irritation.

The Bishop reassured Sister Abigail, with a smile; then, pointing
toward the closed door: "Proceed with your recital, Mother
Sub-Prioress," he said. "You have as yet given me no proof confirming
your belief that the Prioress is within the cell."

"When the absence of Mary Antony became known, my lord," continued
Mother Sub-Prioress, "we felt it right to acquaint the Reverend Mother
with the old lay-sister's flight. I, myself, knocked upon this door;
but the only reply I received was the continuous low chanting of
prayers, from within; not so much a clear chanting, as a murmur; and
whenever, during the night, nuns listened at the door, or ventured
again to tap, the sound of the Reverend Mother's voice, reciting psalms
or prayers, reached them. As you ma