"To appear at the priory with all our household! Surely, my husband, that command is something strange ?" Lady Chadgrove raised her eyes anxiously to her lord's face, to see thereon an answering look of perplexity not untinged by anxiety.

He was perusing a paper held in his hands.
"Such is the missive," he remarked.

"It was brought by a lay brother but now.

Methinks the fellow is yet in the kitchen.

Our mead is not to be lightly disdained.