Nay, rather than let one escape, I would shut up all the little foolish birds in a Nunnery, with our excellent Sub-Prioress to administer necessary discipline." With his elbows resting upon the arms of the chair, the Bishop put his fingers together, so that the tips met most precisely; then bent his lips to them, and looked at the Prioress.
She, troubled and sick at heart, lifting deep pools of silent misery, met the merry twinkle in the Bishop's eyes, and sat astonished.

What was it like?
Why it was like the song of a robin, perched on a frosty bough, on Christmas morning! It was so young and gay; so jocund, and so hopeful.
Meeting it, the Prioress realised fully, what she had many times half-divined, that the revered and reverend Prelate sitting opposite, for all his robes and dignity, his panoply of Church and State, had the heart of a merry schoolboy out on a holiday.
For the moment she felt much older than the Bishop, infinitely sadder; more travel-worn and worldly-wise.
Then she looked at the silver hair; the firm mouth, with a shrewd curve at either corner; the thoughtful brow.
And then she looked at the Bishop's ring.
The Bishop wore a remarkable ring; not a signet, but a large gem of great value, beautifully cut in many facets, and clear set in massive gold.

This precious stone, said to be a chrysoprasus, had been given to the Bishop by a Russian prince, in acknowledgment of a great service rendered him when he came on pilgrimage to Rome.

The rarity of these gems arose partly from the fact that the sovereigns of Russia had decreed that they should be held exclusively for royal ornament, forbidding their use or purchase by people of lesser degree.
But its beauty and its rarity were not the only qualities of the precious stone in the Bishop's ring.

The strangest thing about it was that its colour varied, according to the Bishop's mood and surroundings.
When the Prioress looked up and met the gay twinkle, the stone in the Bishop's ring was a heavenly blue, the colour of forget-me-nots beside a meadow brook, or the clear azure of the sky above a rosy sunset.