On the fifth day of Denise’s sojourn there, one of the nuns bent over her, and told her in an impressive whisper that the Prioress was coming to sit beside her bed. “Be very meek with her, my dear,” said the nun, “and if she speaks sharply to you, remember that it is for the good of your soul.” So Ursula came, white wimple about yellow face, severe, admonitory, stooping very stiffly towards the level of this mere woman. She sat down on the stool beside Denise’s bed, and began at once to catechise her as she would have catechised a forward child. Denise went scarlet at the first question. It was flashed upon her without delicacy that Ursula knew her secret, and that either Aymery or Marpasse had told her something of what they knew. And Denise’s pride was not so frail and weak that she could suffer Ursula to take her heart and handle it. “Madame,” she said, “I have much to thank you for. Yet I would ask you not to speak of what is past. Being wise in the matter, you will know what my thoughts must be.” Ursula was not to be repulsed in such easy fashion, for she knew a part of Denise’s tale, and had decided in her own mind that Aymery had treated the subject with too much chivalry. Compassion had softened the harsher outlines, and Ursula had no doubt that Denise was less innocent than she may have pretended. “My daughter,” said she, “for the good of your soul, I cannot let such things pass unheeded.” Denise lay motionless, staring at the timbers of the roof. Ursula talked on. “Our Mother in Heaven knows that we are frail creatures, and that sin is in the world, but it is the hiding of sin that brings us into perdition. It is meet for your penitence that I should speak to you of these infirmities. There is no shame so great that it may not be retrieved. But you must own your sin, my daughter, and humble yourself before Heaven.” Denise’s hands moved restlessly over the coverlet. “I have confessed it,” she said, “though it was not of my own seeking. God himself cannot condemn that as a lie.” Ursula’s face grew more austere and forbidding. She detected hardness and obstinacy in Denise, and overlooked that sensitive pride that may seem reticent and cold. “You speak too boastfully,” she said. “It may be that God wills it that I should bring you to humbleness and a sense of shame.” “It is the truth, that I have suffered,” said Denise. “Not yet perhaps, have you suffered sufficiently, for the proper chastening of the spirit. Think, girl, of God’s great goodness, and the compassion of Our Mother, and St. Helena, in snatching you from death, and the flames, you—one who had fallen, a broken vessel by the roadside, the companion of low women——” Again Denise’s face flashed scarlet, but this time there was anger in the colour.