It was a trying moment, but it passed. Probably Vlaye knew the chapel of old, and knew that the good father had fled from it. At any rate he passed by it, and rode on his way. She heard the trampling of the horses break the singing of the ford; and then she heard only the murmur of the water and the morning hymn of a lark that, startled by the passage of the riders, soared above the glen, and with the sunshine on its throbbing breast, hailed the warm rising of another day. Whether the lark's song appealed to the softer strain in her, or she began to hate the sordid interior with its grey half-light, the moment she was sure that the riders had gone on their way she opened the door and went out. The sun was peeping into the valley and all nature was astir. The laughing waters of the ford, the steep bluff, darksome by night, now clad in waving tree-tops, the floor of meadow emerald-green, all reflected the brightness of a sky in which not one but half a dozen songsters trilled forth the joy of life. After the gloom, the vigil, the danger of the night, the scene appealed to her strongly; and for a brief time, while she stood gazing on the vale unmarred by human works or human presence, she felt a compunction; such a feeling as in a similar scene invades the breast of the veteran hunter, and whispers to him that to carry death into the haunts of nature is but a sorry task. A feeling as quickly suppressed in the one case as in the other. A few minutes later the Abbess appeared in the doorway, and beckoned to the woman to join her outside. "Give me your hood and veil," she said in a tone that forestalled demur. "And I need your outer robe! Don't stare, woman!" she continued fiercely. "Is there any one to see you? Can the hills hurt you? Obey. It is my pleasure to wear the dress of the order, and I have it not with me!" "But, madam----" "Obey, woman, and take my cloak!" the Abbess retorted. "Wrap yourself in that!" And when the change was made, and she had assumed over her dress the loose black and white robe of the order, "Now wait for me here," she said. "And if he call, as is possible, do not go to him, but fetch me!" She departed towards the pool below the ford, and, disappearing behind a clump of low willows, made, using the still water for a mirror, some further changes in her toilet. Not fruitlessly, for when she returned to the door of the chapel, the woman who awaited her stared, thinking that she had never seen her mistress show fairer in her silks than in this black and white, which she so seldom favoured. And soon there was another who thought--if not that thought, a similar one. The Duke, opening on the glory of sunshine and summer warmth, the eyes that had so nearly closed for good, saw at the foot of his litter a wondrous figure kneeling before the altar.