Then, quick as thought, the unexpected happened.

Three rapid hops, a jerky bend of the red breast, a flash of wings----

The robin had flown off with the white pea! The shrivelled and the
speckled alone remained upon the seat.

Uttering a cry of horror and dismay, the old lay-sister fell upon her
knees, lifting despairing hands to trees and sky.


Down by the lower wall, in earnest meditation, the Prioress moved back
and forth, on the Cypress Walk.

Mary Antony's shriek of dismay, faint but unmistakable, reached her
ears. Turning, she passed noiselessly up the green sward, on the
further side of the yew hedge; but paused, in surprise, as she drew
level with the beech; for the old lay-sister's voice penetrated the
hedge, and the first words she overheard seemed to the Prioress wholly
incomprehensible.

"Ah, thou Knight of the Bloody Vest!" moaned Mary Antony. "Heaven send
thy wicked perfidy may fall on thine own pate! Intruding thyself into
our most private places; begging food, which could not be refused;
wheedling old Mary Antony into letting thee have a peep at the holy
Ladies--thou bold, bad man!--and then carrying off the Reverend Mother,
Herself! Ha! Hadst thou but caught away Mother Sub-Prioress, she
would have reformed thy home, whipped thy children, and mended thine
own vile manners, thou graceless churl! Or hadst thou taken Sister