It was seven o’clock when Sœur Celeste, the chaplain, came to summon the bride-elect to confession and interrogation with Monseigneur the Bishop of St. Nazaire. As the two women passed together down the long corridor of novices, through the cold cloister and empty refectory and along the passage leading to the chapter, Laure’s heart was struck with a chill of fear. How terribly empty the convent was! No one in the refectory, the corridors scarcely lighted, the whole convent utterly silent; for the drone of prayers in the church was inaudible here. She wondered how the terrible vigil progressed, how many nuns had fainted in their fatigue. She thought of anything but the matter before her, and was still unprepared when the chaplain left her alone at the door of the chapter. The Bishop of St. Nazaire was alone in this room, and at Laure’s appearance he rose and went to her, taking her by the hand, and not amazed to find her icy cold. “My daughter!” he said gently; and Laure, looking into his face, was suddenly filled with an ineffable comfort. She had known the Bishop all her life, for he was her mother’s close friend and a constant visitor at Le Crépuscule. But never before had she seen him in this fulness of his office, so replete with magnetic spirituality. If the unswervingly narrow tenets of his creed made St. Nazaire too arbitrary where his religion was concerned, and if the geniality of his own nature had, at times, brought upon him in his own home reactions that afterwards rendered necessary the severest penances, at least these two extremes of his life had brought him to a remarkable intermediate balance. Irrespective of his state, he could be defined as a man of the world, of large sympathies, having a broad understanding of human frailty, because of the unconquerable weaknesses of his own nature. His ethical code was one of high severity and strict purity; and he strove with all the power of his spirit to follow it himself, never failing, the while, to excuse the eternal failures of others. And now, as Laure looked up into his large, smooth-shaven face, framed in long fair hair, and lighted by a pair of bright blue eyes that generally regarded the world with a surprising air of trustful innocence, the young novice lost all her sense of desolation, and felt herself suddenly introduced into a secure and unhoped-for haven. St. Nazaire himself, examining the young girl’s face, and searching her soul therein, knew that at this moment he was nearer to the inmost being of the daughter of Le Crépuscule than he should ever be again; and he felt that no one ever yet had been in a position to probe the depths of her nature as he was going to probe them now. She gave herself up to him as completely as Eleanore had given her once long ago, when, as a new-born infant, she had wailed in his arms at her baptism before the altar in the chapel of the Twilight Castle.