But----" The Prioress paused, looking past the Bishop at the gracious figure of the Madonna.

She had remembered, of a sudden, how Hugh had knelt there, saying: "Blessed Virgin.

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help this woman of mine to understand that if she break her troth to me, holding herself from me, now, when I am come to claim her, she sends me out to an empty life, to a hearth beside which no woman will sit, to a home forever desolate." "But ?" said the Bishop, leaning forward.