When my Lady dismissed us, I went to my work in the illumination-room, where Joan, with Sister Annot and Sister Josia, awaited my coming. I bade Sister Josia finish the Holy Family she was painting yesterday for a missal which we are preparing for my Lord's Grace of York; I told Sister Annot to lay the gold leaf on the Book of Hours writing for my Lady of Suffolk; and as Margaret, who commonly works with her, was not yet come, I began myself to show Joan how to coil up the tail of a griffin--she said, to put a yard of tail into an inch of parchment. It appeared to amuse her very much to see how I twisted and interlaced the tracery, so as to fill up every little corner of the parallelogram. When the outline was drawn, and she began to fill it with cobalt, as I sat by, she said suddenly yet softly-- "Mother Annora, I have been considering whether I should tell you something." "Tell me what, dear child?" quoth I. "I am afraid," said she, "I shocked you yesterday, making you think I was scarcely sound in the faith. Yet where can lie the verity of the faith, if not in Holy Writ? And I marvelled if it should aggrieve you less, if you knew one thing--yet that might give you pain." "Let me hear it, Joan." "Did you know," said she, dropping her voice low, "that it was in part for heresy that your own father suffered death?" "My father!" cried I. "Joan, I know nothing of my father, save only that he angered Queen Isabel, and for what cause wis I not." "For two causes: first, because the King her husband loved him, and she was of that fashion that looked on all love borne by him as so much robbed from herself. But the other was that very thing--that she was orthodox, and he was--what the priests called an heretic. There might be other causes: some men say he was proud, and covetous, and unpitiful. I know not if it be true or no. But that they writ him down an heretic, as also they did his father, and Archdeacon Baldok--so much I know." I felt afraid to ask more, and yet I had great longing to hear it. "And my mother?" said I. I think I was like one that passes round and round a matter, each time a little nearer than before--wishing, and yet fearing, to come to the kernel of it. "I have heard somewhat of her," said Joan, "from the Lady Julian my grandmother. She was a Leybourne born, and she wedded my grandfather, Sir John de Hastings, whose stepmother was the Lady Isabel La Despenser, your father's sister. I think, from what she told me, your mother was a little like--Sister Roberga." I am sorely afraid I ought not to have answered as I did, for it was--"The blessed saints forfend!" "Not altogether," said Joan, with a little laugh. "I never heard that she was ill-tempered. On the contrary, I imagine, she was somewhat too easy; but I meant, a little like what Mother Gaillarde calls a butterfly--with no concern for realities--frivolous, and lacking in due thought."