So soon as Joy could gain possession of her surprised senses, she calmed the weeping woman and began to question her. “My good woman,” she said, “what are you talking about? Did you ever know my mother, and where did you know her?” “In the Palace, to be sure, as they called the house of that imp of Satan, the Baroness. I was the wash-lady there, for it’s not Mrs Conner the landlady as is above spakin’ of the days when she wasn’t as high in the world as she is now; and many is the cheerin’ cup of coffee or tay from your own mother’s hand, that I’ve had in the forenoon, to chirk me up and put me through my washing, bless her sweet face; and niver have I forgotten her; and niver have I ceased to miss her and the fine young man that took such an interest in her and that I’m as sure loved her, in spite of his marrying the Judge’s spook of a daughter, as I am that the Holy Virgin loves us all; and it’s a foine man that your father must have been, but young Mr Cheney was foiner.” So little by little Joy drew the story from Mrs Connor and learned the name of the mysterious father, so carefully guarded from her in Mrs Irving’s manuscript, the father at whose funeral services she had so recently officiated as organist. And strangest and most startling of all, she learned that Arthur Stuart’s insane wife was her half-sister. Added to all this, Joy was made aware of the nature of the reports which the Baroness had been circulating about her; and her feeling of bitter resentment and anger toward the church committee was modified by the knowledge that it was not owing to the shadow on her birth, but to the false report of her own evil life, that she had been asked to resign. After Mrs Connor had gone, Joy was for a long time in meditation, and then turned in a mechanical manner to her delayed task. Her book of “Impressions” lay on a table close at hand. And as she took it up the leaves opened to the sentence she had written three years before, after her talk with the rector about Marah Adams. “It seems to me I could not love a man who did not seek to lead me higher; the moment he stood below me and asked me to descend, I should realise he was to be pitied, not adored!”