Bearing the other, Sir Andrew departed into the vestry, leaving Hugh and Eve seated together in the darkness of the chancel stalls.
Presently his light reappeared in the confessional, where he sat robed, and thither at his summons went first Hugh and then Eve.

When their tales were told, those who watched in the nave of the splendid building--which, reared by the Knights Templar, was already following that great Order to decay and ruin--saw the star of light he bore ascend to the high altar.

Here he set it down, and, advancing to the rail, addressed the two shadowy figures that knelt before him.
"Son and daughter," he said, "you have made confession with contrite hearts, and the Church has given you absolution for your sins.

Yet penance remains, and because those sins, though grievous in themselves, were not altogether of your own making, it shall be light.

Hugh de Cressi and Eve Clavering, who are bound together by lawful love between man and woman and the solemn oath of betrothal which you here renew before God, this is the penance that I lay upon you by virtue of the authority in me vested as a priest of Christ: Because between you runs the blood of John Clavering, the cousin of one of you and the brother of the other, slain by you, Hugh de Cressi, in mortal combat but yester eve, I decree and enjoin that for a full year from this day you shall not be bound together as man and wife in the holy bonds of matrimony, nor converse after the fashion of affianced lovers.