“Well, twelve years I have spent here, and never had speech with the Sacrist. Once I was alone in the church when it was dark, and the daylight only lingered aloft in the roof, and of a sudden I lighted on her in the chancel, busied in her office. Her pale face in her black hood showed like a spirit’s, and I thought it was the blessed Radegund that had come down from her window, and I was horribly afraid.” “I think that from the sacristy window her eye followed me about the garden as I walked there,” said Elizabeth. “It follows me still, and it makes my flesh creep. What good woman would shun her sisters so? Heaven rest her soul, for be sure she has much to answer for. If she has confessed herself, it is not to our confessor or the Prioress, for I think she has hardly spoken these many years to any but Alice Portress that waits on her.” “Yes, Alice was with her at the end. It was Alice that dug the grave; Alice rings the knell; Alice laid her out in her Sacrist’s chamber, and she has placed two white roses on the dead woman’s breast.” “Roses?” said Elizabeth Daveys; “roses are not for dead nuns. Whence got she roses?” “That I can tell you,” said the novice, glad to take her part in the conversation, “for Alice told me herself. She got them from the churchyard of St Peter’s on the hill.” * * * * * The office for the dead was said, the empty grave was filled, and Alice the Portress was closeted with the Prioress. “To you, lady Prioress--not to the Nuns in Chapter--I confess the sin of my youth; not to them, nor yet to you while sister Margery lived. She is gone, and why should I remain? Forty years we shared the secret. She is past censure or forgiveness. On me let the blame rest. I ask no pardon, but only to be dismissed from the house of St Radegund, that I have so unworthily served. [Illustration: _Entrance to Chapter House._] “There is none but myself and poor sister Emma that remembers St Radegund’s before the pestilence year. I was but a child then, and my mother was Portress before me. My mother often brought me to the lodge, and I used to play with the novices, or sit at the gate when my mother was away. Margery had but lately come to St Radegund’s--seventeen, perhaps, or eighteen years of age she was. Hers was a proud family--the Caillys of Trumpington, and they were rich, and good to St Radegund’s. They are gone and forgotten now, but often have I heard old Thomas Key tell of them, for he was a Trumpington man, and he knew the De Freviles of Shelford too. There are De Freviles at Shelford yet, but I think that none there remembers young Nicholas De Frevile that was Sir Robert’s son.