As she thus spoke, she vanished through a private door, and Reginald Front-de-Boeuf entered the apartment. Cedric, with some difficulty, compelled himself to make obeisance to the haughty Baron, who returned his courtesy with a slight inclination of the head.

“Thy penitents, father, have made a long shrift⁠—it is the better for them, since it is the last they shall ever make. Hast thou prepared them for death?”

“I found them,” said Cedric, in such French as he could command, “expecting the worst, from the moment they knew into whose power they had fallen.”

“How now, Sir Friar,” replied Front-de-Boeuf, “thy speech, methinks, smacks of a Saxon tongue?”

“I was bred in the convent of St. Withold of Burton ,” answered Cedric.