Through the long, chilly night, mother and daughter slept together, each with peace in her heart. At dawn, however, madame slipped quietly out of Laure’s unconscious embrace, and rose and prepared herself for the day. And presently she left the room, while Laure still slept. It was some time afterwards before there crept upon the blank of the girl’s mind a dim, fluttering shadow telling her that light had come again over the world. How long it was before this first sense became a double consciousness, no one knows. Laure’s stupor had been so heavy, she had been so utterly dead in her weariness, that it required a powerful subconscious effort to throw off the bonds of sleep. But when the two heavy eyes at last fell open, she gasped, and sat suddenly up in her bed.

“Holy Mother! it is an angel!”

The face that she looked on smiled sunnily.

“No. I am Lenore.” And she would have come round to the side of the bed, but that Laure held up a hand to stay her.

“Prithee, prithee, do not move, thou spirit of Lenore! Am I, then, come into thy land? Is’t heaven—for me?”

For an instant, at the easily explainable illusion about that other, the new Lenore’s head drooped, and she sighed. How full of the dead maiden was every member of this Twilight Castle! But again, shaking off the momentary melancholy, she lifted her eyes, and answered Laure’s fixed look. So these two young women, whose histories had been so utterly different, and yet in their way so pitiably alike, learned, in this one long glance, to know each other. Into Laure’s deeply burning eyes, Lenore gazed till she was as one under a hypnotic spell. Her senses were all but swimming before the other turned her look, and then she asked dreamily: “Thou art Lenore. Tell me, who is Lenore?”

The other hesitated for a moment. She had learned from Alixe, on the previous evening, the history of the strange home-coming, and all that any one knew of what had gone before it; and she realized that any question that Laure might ask must be fully answered. Yet it cost her a strong mental effort before she could say: “I was the wife of thy brother.”

“Ah! Gerault! Where is he?” Laure paused for an instant. “Thou—wast—his wife, thou sayest?”

Lenore gazed at her sadly, wondering if the wanderer must so soon be confronted with new sorrow. Laure sat there, bewildered, but questioning with her eyes, a suggestion of fear beginning to show in her face. Lenore realized how madame must shrink from telling the story of Gerault’s death; so, presently, lifting her eyes to Laure’s again, she said in a low voice,—

“Gerault’s wife was I, because—since September, thy brother—sleeps—in the chapel—by his father.”

Laure listened with wide eyes to these words; and, having heard, she neither moved nor spoke. A few tears gathered slowly, and fell down her face to her woollen robe, and then she bowed her head till it rested on the hands clasped on her knee. Lenore stood where she was, looking on, knowing not whether to go or stay; realizing instinctively that there are natures that desire to find their own comfort.

While Lenore was still debating the point, Madame Eleanore and Alixe came together into the room; and as soon as madame beheld Lenore, she knew that her daughter had learned all that she was to know of sorrow: that what she herself most dreaded, had mercifully come to pass. And going to the bed, she took Laure into her arms.

Their embrace was as close as the first of yesterday had been. Laure clung to her mother, getting comfort from the mere contact; and, in her child’s grief for the dead, Eleanore felt the touch of that sympathy for which she had hungered in silence through the first shock of her loss. For Laure was of her own blood and of Gerault’s; had known the Seigneur as brother, companion, and equal, and had looked up to him even as he had looked up to his mother. Thus, bitterly poignant as were these moments of fresh grief, there was in them also a great consolation,—the consolation of companionship. And when finally madame raised her head, there was written in her face what none had seen there since the time of Laure’s departure for her novitiate at La Madeleine. Then she reminded Laure of Alixe’s presence, and Laure, looking up, smiled through her tears, and held out both hands.

“Alixe! Alixe! my sister! Art thou glad I am come home?”

“So glad, Laure! There have been many hours empty for want of thee since thy going. And art thou—” she hesitated a little—“art thou to stay with us now?”

Accidentally, inadvertently, had come the question that had lain hidden both in Laure’s heart and in her mother’s since almost the first moment of the return. Laure herself dared not answer Alixe; but she looked fearfully at her mother, her eyes filled with mute pleading. And Eleanore, seeing the look, made a sudden decision in her heart,—

“Yea! Laure shall stay with us now! There shall be no doubting of it. Laure is my child; and I shall keep her with me, an all Christendom forbid!”

The last sentence flew out in answer to madame’s secret fears; and she did not realize how much meaning it might hold for other ears. Her speech was followed by an intense silence. Laure did not dare ask aloud the questions that reason answered for her; and Lenore and Alixe both felt that it was not their place to speak. In the end, then, Eleanore herself had to break the strain, which she did by saying, with a brisk air,—

“Come, come, Laure! Rise, and go into thine own room here. I have laid out one of the old-time gowns, with shoes, chemise, bliault, and under-tunic complete, and also a wimple and head-veil. Make thyself ready for the day, while we go down to break our fast. When thou’rt dressed I will have food brought thee here; and after thou’st eaten, monseigneur will come up to thee. Hasten, for ’tis rarely cold!”

Laure jumped from the bed eager to see her childhood’s room again; eager for her meal; most of all eager, in spite of her apprehensiveness, to know what St. Nazaire had to say to her. As she paused to gather her mantle close about her, and to push the hair out of her eyes, her gaze chanced to meet that of Lenore. There was between them no spoken word; but in that instant was born a sudden affection which, while they lived together, saw not the end of its growth.

As Eleanore and the two young women left madame’s room on their way downstairs, Laure entered alone into the room of her youth and her innocence. It was exactly as it had been on the day she last saw it. The small, curtained bed was ready for occupancy. The chairs, the table, the round steel mirror, the carved wooden chest for clothes, lastly, the small priedieu, were just where they had always stood. The wooden shutters were open, and the half-transparent glass was all aflame with the reflection of sunlight on the sea; for the cold, clear morning was advancing. Across a narrow settle, beside one of the windows, lay the clothes that the mother had selected,—the girlhood clothes that she had worn in those years of her other life. Like one that dimly dreams, Laure took these garments up, one by one, and examined them, handling them with the same ruminative tenderness of touch that she might have used for some one that had been very dear to her, but had died long since,—so long that the bitterness of death had gone from memory.

When she had looked at them for a long time, Laure began slowly to don her clothes. She performed her toilet with all the precision of her maidenhood, coiling her hair with a care that suggested vanity, and adjusting her filet and veil with the same touch that they had known so many times before. Her outer tunic was of green saie; and even though her whole form had grown deplorably thin, she found it a little snug in bust and hip. Finally, when she was quite dressed, she sat down at one of the windows to wait for some one to bring food to her. To her surprise, it was Lenore who carried up the tray of bread and milk; and she found herself a little relieved that no former member of the Castle was to see her yet in the familiar dress of long ago. When she took the tray from the frail white hands of her sister-in-law, she murmured gratefully: “I thank thee that thou hast deigned to wait on me, madame.”

Lenore’s big blue eyes opened wide, as she smiled and answered: “Prithee, say not ‘madame.’ Rather, if thou canst, I would have thee call me ‘sister,’ for such I should wish to be to thee.”

“My sister!” Laure’s voice was choked as she raised both arms and threw them about the slender body of the other girl with such abandon that Lenore was obliged to put her off a little. Finally, however, Laure sat down to the table on which she had placed her simple breakfast, and as she carried the first bite to her lips, Lenore moved softly toward the door. Before going out, however, she turned and said quietly: “Thou’lt not be long alone. The Bishop is coming to thee at once.”

Laure’s spoon fell suddenly into her bowl, and she looked quickly round; but, to her chagrin, Lenore had already slipped away.

Left to herself, Laure could not eat. Hungry as she was, her anxiety and her suspense were greater than her appetite. Why was it that Lenore had so suddenly escaped from her? Why was it that she had seen no members of the Castle company save three women since her home-coming? Why was she forced thus to eat alone? Above all, why should the Bishop come to her here, instead of receiving her, as had been his custom, in the chapel? Laure remembered the last serious talk she had had with St. Nazaire, and shuddered. In her own mind she realized perfectly the spiritual enormity of her sin; and, however persistently she might refuse to confess it to herself, she knew also what the penalty of that sin must be. It was many minutes before she could force herself to recommence her meal; and she had taken little when there was a tap on the door. She had not time to do more than rise when the door opened, and her mother, followed by St. Nazaire, entered the room.

Madame dropped behind as the Bishop advanced, and Laure bowed before him.

“My child, I trust thou art found well in body?” said St. Nazaire, more solemnly than she had ever heard him speak.

“Yes, monseigneur,” was the subdued reply.

Now madame came up, and indicated a chair to the Bishop, who, after seeing her seated, sat down himself, while Laure remained on her feet in front of them. Then followed a pause, uncomfortable to all, terrifying to Laure, who was becoming hysterically nervous with dread. She dared not, however, break the silence; and with a convulsive sigh she folded her arms across her breast, and stood waiting for whatever was to come. Monseigneur regarded her closely and steadily, as if he were reading something that he wished to know of her, but at the same time he did not make her shrink from him. On the contrary, his expression brought the assurance that he had lost nothing of his old-time sympathy with human nature. His first question was unhesitatingly direct.

“Laure,” he said very quietly, “art thou bound by the marriage tie to this Bertrand Flammecoeur?”

At the sound of the name Laure trembled, and her white face grew whiter still. “No,” she answered in a half-whisper, at the same time clenching her two hands till the nails pierced her flesh.

“And thou hast lived with him, under his name, since thy departure from the priory of the Holy Madeleine?”

Laure paused for a moment to steady her voice, and then answered huskily: “Until two months past.”

“And in that two months?”

“I have begged my way from where we were—hither.”

“Thou hast in this time known none but the man Flammecoeur?”

Laure crimsoned and put up her hand in protest. Then she said quietly, “None.”

Monseigneur bowed his head and remained silent for a moment. When he looked at her again it was with a gentler expression. “Laure,” said he, in a very kindly voice, “but a little time after thy flight from the priory, I placed upon thee, and upon the man that abducted thee, the ban of excommunication, for violating the holiest laws of the Holy Church. That ban is not yet raised, and by it, as well thou knowest, all that come in voluntary contact with thee are defiled.”

For a moment Laure dropped her head to her breast. When she lifted it again, her face had not changed; and she asked, “Can that ban ever be lifted?”

“Yes. By me.”

Laure fell upon her knees before him. “What must I do? Tell me the penance! I would give anything—even to my life—yet—nay! There is one thing I will not do.”

St. Nazaire frowned. “What is that?” he asked.

“Father, I will not go back into the priory. I will never return alive into that living death. Rather would I cast myself from the top of the Castle cliff into the sea below, and trust—”

“Laure! Laure! Be silent!” cried Eleanore, sharply.

Laure stopped and stood motionless, her eyes aflame, her face deathly white, her fingers twining and intertwining among themselves, as she waited for St. Nazaire to speak again. His hands were folded upon his knee, and he appeared lost in thought. Only after an unendurable suspense did he look again into the girl’s eyes, saying slowly, in a tone lower than was habitual to him,—

“Thou tookest once the vows of the nun. These, it is true, thou hast broken continually, and hast abused and violated till their chain of virtue binds thee no more. Yet the words of those vows passed thy lips scarce more than a year agone; and for that reason thou art not free. Ere thou canst be absolved of duty to the priory, thou must go to the Mother-prioress and ask her humbly if she will again receive thee into the convent. An she refuse, thou wilt be freed from the bond.”

“Monseigneur—will she set me free?” asked Laure, in a low tone.

“Yea, Laure; for methinks I shall counsel her so to do. Thou hast not the vocation of a nun. Thy spirit is too much thine own, too freedom-loving, to accept the suppression of that secluded life. If I will, I can see to it that thou’rt freed from the priory. But that being accomplished—what then, Demoiselle Laure?”

“Ah—after that—may not the ban be removed? Can I obtain no absolution? Can I not be made free to dwell here in my home in my beloved Castle,—my fitting CrÉpuscule?—Mother! Shall I not be received here? Have I no home?”

“This is thy home, and I thy mother always. Though my soul be condemned to eternal fire, Laure, thou art my child, the flesh of my flesh and the blood of my blood; and I will not give thee up.”

“Eleanore!” The Bishop spoke sharply, and his face grew severe. “Eleanore, deceive not thyself. Nor yet thou, thou child of wilfulness! Laure hath sinned not only against the rules of her Church and her God, but against the laws of mankind. Her sin has been great and very ugly. Think not that, by brave words of motherhood, or many tears and pleadings of sudden repentance, she can regain her old position. The stain of this bygone year will remain upon her forever. She is under a heavy ban, and she must go through a rigorous penance ere she can be received again among the undefiled. Art ready, Laure, to place thy sick soul in my hands?”

Laure bent her head.

“Then I prescribe for thee this penance: Thou shalt go alone, on foot, to Holy Madeleine, and there seek of the Reverend Mother thy freedom from the priory. If it be granted, thou mayest return hither to this same room and remain shut up in utter solitude, to pray and fast as rigorously as thy body will admit, for the space of fourteen days. If, by that time, thou art come to see truly the magnitude of thy offence, and if thy mind be purified of evil thoughts and thy heart opened to the abounding mercy of God, I will absolve thee of thy sin, and lift away the ban of Heaven. For meseemeth, my daughter, that thy sin found thee out or ever thou hadst reached this house of safety. There is the mark of suffering upon thy brow, and, seeing it, I bow before the power of God, that holdeth over us whithersoever we may go. But see that in thy lonely hours thou find true repentance for thy evil deed. For if that come not, then truly shalt thou be an outcast on the face of the earth. I will go to-day to the priory to talk with the MÈre Piteuse, if thy heart accepteth my word.”

Laure fell upon her knees before the Bishop and kissed his hand in token of submission. St. Nazaire suffered her for a few moments to humble herself, and then, lifting her up, he rose himself and quickly left the room.

Eleanore remained a few moments longer with her daughter, and then went away, leaving Laure alone again, to dread the ordeal that was before her, the facing of the assemblage of nuns in that place that she remembered as her heart’s prison.

By order of the Bishop, Laure was left alone all day, and this twenty-four hours was the most wretched that she had to spend after her return to Le CrÉpuscule. On the following day she went alone to the priory,—not on foot, as the Bishop had at first commanded; for the snow was too deep, and Laure too much exhausted by her privations of the last two months, for her safely to endure the fatigue of such a walk. She rode thither on horseback; and possibly extracted more soul’s good out of the ride than she would have got afoot, for the whole way was laden with bitter memories and grief and shame. The Bishop himself met her at the priory gate, and he remained at her side throughout the time that she was there. The ordeal was not terrible. MÈre Piteuse bore out her name, and Laure thought that the spirit of the Saviour had surely descended upon the reverend woman. As an unheard-of concession, the penitent was permitted to recant her vows before only the eight officers of the priory assembled in the chapter-house, instead of before the whole company of nuns in the great church; and thus Laure did not see at all her former companion and abettor, Soeur Eloise, a meeting with whom she had dreaded more than anything else. And when, in the afternoon, Laure finally rode away from the priory gate, it was with a heart throbbing with devotion for St. Nazaire and his goodness to her. Swiftly and eagerly, in the falling twilight, she traversed the road leading back to the Castle, and, when she reached home, night had fallen. Her mother, who had spent the day in the deepest anxiety, was waiting for her in the great hall, and, the moment that Laure entered, weary with the now unusual exercise, she cried out, “It is well? Thou art dismissed?”

And as Laure began to answer the question with a full description of the day, her mother drew her slowly up the stairs, across the hall, and finally into her own narrow room, which was to be the chamber of penance. When they entered there, Laure became suddenly silent; for the little place was dark and chill, and the thought of what was before her struck an added tremor to her heart. Madame read her thoughts and said gently,—

“Be not so sad, dear child. When thou thinkest of the fair, pure, loving life that lies before us, in this Castle of thy youth, surely fourteen little days of peaceful solitude cannot fright thee? Think always that God is on high, and that around thee are those that love thee well; and thus thou canst not be very miserable. Lights and food shall be brought; and then—I bid thee make much of thy solitude, my child; for there is no more healing balm for wounded souls. Now, commending thee to the mercy of the All-merciful, I leave thee.”

In the darkness, Laure clung to her mother as if it were their last embrace, and madame had to put the girl’s hands away before she would bear to be left alone. But at last the door was closed and bolted on the outside; and Laure, within, knew that her imprisonment was begun. Feeling her way to a chair, she seated herself thereon, and laid her head in her hands. Burning and incoherent thoughts hurried through her brain, and she was still lost in these when there was a soft tap at her door, and the outer bolt was drawn. She rose and stumbled hurriedly to open it, but there was no one outside. On the floor was a burning candle, and a tray on which stood a jug of water and a loaf of bread. As she took them in, Laure experienced a wave of desolation. However, she set the food and drink down on her table, lighted the torch on the wall at the candle-flame, and finally sat herself down to eat. No grace to God passed her lips as she took her first bite from the loaf; for her heart was bitter in its weariness. But after she had eaten and drunk she lost the inclination to brood; and, overcome with weariness and the emotions of the day, she hurriedly disrobed, extinguished both her lights, and crept, with her first sense of comfort, into the warmly covered bed. For a long time she lay there, chilly and a little nervous, but thinking of nothing. Then gradually her spirit grew calmer; some of the weariness was done away, and she fell asleep.

When next she woke it was daylight,—a gray, January morning,—and Laure realized, rather disconsolately, that she could sleep no more for the time. Therefore she left her bed, threw a mantle around her, and went to the door, to see if there might be food without. Somewhat to her dismay, she found the door locked fast, and, having no means of knowing what the hour might be, she thought that possibly she had overslept, and that she should have nothing to eat throughout the morning. The heaviness of her head told her that she had slept too long; and, not daring to get back to bed again, she began resignedly to dress. She was in the midst of her toilet when there came a tap at the door, and she flew to open it. Outside stood a kitchen-boy, who handed her a tray containing fresh bread and water, and asked her with formal respect for the stale food of the night before. This she gave him; and immediately the door was shut and rebolted.

With grim precision Laure finished dressing and broke her fast, meantime keeping her thoughts fixed on the most trivial subjects. But when her meal was over, and she knew how long the day must be, and realized that there was no escape from herself, she sat down in the largest chair in the room, let her eyes wander over the familiar objects, and allowed her thoughts to take what form they would. The terrible fatigue of her lonely journey was quite gone now. Nor was there in her own person anything to remind her of her recent suffering. Her body was clean, well-clothed, and warm, and, in her youth, the memory of the past terrible two months grew dim, and instead there rose up before her mental vision a very different picture,—an image,—the image of the idol and the ruin of her life: her joy, her shame, her ecstasy, and her despair; Bertrand Flammecoeur, the troubadour, in his matchless, irresponsible untrustworthiness, his incomparable beauty, his fiery enthusiasm. For, strange as it may be, all the bitterness, all the suffering that this man had brought her, had not killed her love for him nor blackened his image in her heart. There being nothing to check her fancy, Laure went mentally back to the hour of her flight with the troubadour, and passed slowly over the whole period of their life together,—from the first days of physical agony and mental shame through the period of increasing delight, to the culmination of her happiness in him and the beginning of its end. Once more she reviewed their journey out of Brittany up the north coast to Calais, whence, in the fair spring weather, they had taken passage to Dover, in England, thence making their way by slow stages to London. Here, in the train of the Duke of Gloucester, uncle of the young Richard, the most powerful man in the kingdom, the two had passed their summer. To Laure it was a summer of fairyland. Flammecoeur had become her god, and she saw him ascend height after height of popularity and favor. His nationality and his profession won for him instant recognition, for trouvÈres from Provence were Persian nightingales to the England of that day. And after his first introduction into high places, his breeding, his dress, and his graceful personality brought him an enviable position, especially among the women of the court. Laure passed always as his wife, and was adroitly exploited among the court gallants. She was still too single-minded to receive the slightest taint from this life. She was found to be as incorruptible as she was pretty, and by this unusual fact her own reputation went up, and her popularity rivalled that of the troubadour. If this manner of life sometimes weighed on her and brought her something of remorse, she found her consolation in the fact that Flammecoeur never wavered in his fidelity. For the time being he was thoroughly infatuated with her; and in their stolen hours of golden solitude both of them found their reward for the ofttimes wearisome round of pleasures that, with them, constituted work.

Now, alone, in her solitary prison-room, Laure of Le CrÉpuscule reviewed her high and holy noon of love, forgetting its subsequence, brooding only over its supreme forgetfulness, till the madness of it was tingling in her every vein, and there rushed over her again, in a tumultuous wave, all that fierce longing, all that hopeless desire, that she thought herself to have endured for the last time. In their early days Flammecoeur had been so much her companion, so devoted to her in little, pretty, telling ways, so constant to her and to her alone, that the thought of any life other than the one with him would have been to her like a promise of eternal death. It was not more their hours of delirium than those of silent communion that they had held together, which brought her now the tears of hopeless yearning. All that she desired without him, was death. All that she had loved or cared for was with him.

At this time came to her the thought of Lenore; and she had an instinctive feeling that, had God seen fit to give her that most precious of all gifts, motherhood, this penitential cell had not been the end for her.

Three days and three nights did Laure spend in this state of bitter rebellion against her lot; and then, from over-wishing, came a change. Up to this time, in her new flood of grief for the separation from Flammecoeur, she had driven from her mind every creeping memory of the day of his change toward her. Another woman had come upon the horizon of his life: a young and noble Englishwoman, of high station. And soon he was pursuing her with the ardor that he no longer spent on Laure. This lady was one of the first that they had met in England, and Laure had liked her before Flammecoeur’s new passion began to develop. But with her first real fears, the poor girl’s jealousy was born, and soon it became the moving spirit of her life. Many times in the ensuing weeks—those bitter weeks of early autumn—did angry words pass between her and her protector, her only shield from the world in this strange land. Once, in a fit of uncontrollable grief and passion, she had left him, and for two days wandered about the streets of London till starvation drove her back to the lodgings of the Flaming-heart. Her reception—of quiet indifference—on her return showed her that her world was in a state of dissolution. For a week she dwelt among its ruins, and then, when she demanded it, he told her that she was no longer dear to him, and he begged her to take what money he had and to set out whither she would, assuring her that she would find no difficulty in securing some excellent abiding-place in this adopted land. Laure took her dismissal heroically. She knew him too well to be horrified at his suggestions as to her procedure; and, refusing his gifts of money, she sold the clothes and ornaments that he had given her in a happier day, and with the proceeds started on her return to CrÉpuscule. Her little store gave out when she had scarce more than reached France; and the last half of the journey had been accomplished by literally begging her way from hut to hut, never giving up the idea of at last reaching the only refuge she could trust,—the place where now she sat dreaming out her woe.

Through the bitter hours when her old jealousy took possession of her again and seared her with its hot flames, Laure found herself, more than once, gazing fixedly at the little priedieu in the corner of the room, where, as a child, she had been wont to kneel each night and morning. Since the hour she had left the priory, a prayer had scarcely passed her lips; and now, in the time of reactive sorrow, she felt a pride about kneeling in supplication to Him whose laws she had so freely broken. In the course of time, for so doth solitude work changes in the hearts of the most stubborn, the spirit of real repentance of her sin came over her; and then, for the first time in her young life, she wept unselfish tears. It was only inch by inch that she crept back toward the place of heart’s peace. But at length, on the tenth day of her penance, she went to her God; and, throwing herself at the feet of the crucifix, claimed her own from the All-merciful.

Never in her life of prayers had Laure prayed as she prayed now. Now at last God was a living Being, and she was come home to Him for forgiveness and for comfort. Her words sprang from her deepest heart. Tears of joy, not pain, welled up within her; and it seemed as if she felt her purity coming back to her again. She believed that she was received before the throne, and listened to; and no absolution of a consecrated bishop had brought her such confidence as this, her first unlettered prayer.

When she rose from her knees it was as if she had been bathed in spirit. Her old joy of youth was again alive within her and shone forth from her eyes with a radiant softness. A strange quiet took possession of her; a new peace was hidden in her heart; tranquillity reigned about her, and the four days of solitude that remained were all too short. She was learning herself anew; but she dreaded that time when others should look into her face and think to find there what she knew was gone from her forever. After her first prayer she did not often resume the accepted attitude of communication with the Most High; yet she prayed almost continually, with a dreamy fervor peculiar to her state. She still thought of Flammecoeur, but no longer with desire; only with a gentle regret for the fever of his soul and that he could never know such peace as hers. She also felt remorse for the part she had played in his life; and this remorse was now her only pain. She suffered under it; but it was easier to endure than the terrible, restless longing that had once consumed her. Indeed, at this time, Laure’s spirituality was exaggerated; for solitude is apt to breed exaggeration in whatever mood the recluse happens to be. But this state was also bound to know its reaction; and, upon the whole, it was as well that the penitential fortnight was near its end.

On the afternoon of the fourteenth day, Laure dressed herself in the somberest robe to be found in her chest,—a loose tunic of rusty black, with mantle of the same, and a rosary around her waist by way of belt. She braided her hair into two long plaits, and bound these round and round her head like a heavy filet. This was all of her coiffure. When she was dressed, she stood in front of her mirror and looked at herself by the smoky light of a torch. Her vanity was not flattered by the reflection; but steel is deceitful sometimes, and Laure did not know how much younger she had grown in the two weeks of her penance. As the hour of liberty approached, she became not a little excited. The thought of being surrounded with such a throng of familiar faces set her aflame with eagerness; and she waited, literally counting the seconds, till she should be set free.

Punctually at the hour in which, two weeks before, Laure had been left alone, her door was opened, and Eleanore and Lenore came together into the room, to lead the prisoner down to the chapel. Madame clasped her warmly by the hand, and looked searchingly into her face: but that was all the salutation that was given, for the ban of excommunication was still upon her. And so, without a word, the three moved quickly to the stairs, and, descending, passed at once into the lighted chapel.

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.