Of all the ceremonies that had been performed in that little room since it was built, more than two centuries before, the one that now took place was perhaps the most impressive, certainly the most unique. Laure, in her penitential garb, presented a curious contrast to the gayly robed Castle company, and to St. Nazaire, in his most gorgeous of canonicals. Yet Laure’s face was more interesting to study than anything else in the crowded room. St. Nazaire, while he confessed and absolved her, watched her with an interest that he had never felt for her before; and he realized that probably never again would he hear such a confession as hers. She told him the whole story of her life after her flight from the priory, with neither break, hesitation, tremor, nor tear. She took her absolution in uplifted silence. And when the ban of excommunication was raised from her, neither the Bishop nor her mother could guess, from her face, what her feeling was. When she had been blessed, and the general benediction pronounced, all the company came crowding to her to give her welcome. After that followed a great feast, at which Laure ate not a mouthful, and drank nothing but a cup of milk. And finally, when all the merrymaking was through, the young woman returned alone to her room, and, this time with her door bolted from within, lay down upon her bed and wept as if her heart had finally dissolved in tears. [Illustration] _CHAPTER THIRTEEN_ LENORE [Illustration] On the morning of the sixteenth of January, Laure went into the spinning-room with the other women, to begin the old, familiar work. The sight of that room brought back to her a peculiar sensation. Long-forgotten memories of her girlhood’s yearnings and restless discontents, half-formed plans and desires, picture after picture of what she had once imagined convent life to be, crowded thick upon her, and caused her to shudder, knowing what these vague dreams had led her to. Here was the room, with its row of wheels and tambour-frames, and, at the end, the big, wooden loom, filled with red warp. Everywhere were little disorderly heaps of flax and uncarded wool, bits of thread and silk, and long woollen remnants clipped from uneven tapestry borders. In a moment this place would be alive with the droning buzz of wheels, the clack-clack of the loom, and the bright chatter of feminine voices. Laure heard it all in the first glance down the room, and in the same instant she lived a lifetime here. Before her eyes was an endless vista of mornings spent in this place upon work that could never keep her thoughts from paths where they should not stray. Alas! with Flammecœur she had neither toiled nor spun.