"Dear my Lady, you are ever where man looketh not for you. But I am sure you heard no ill of yourself. You will never forbid me to visit my dear Mother Annora; you love her, and you love me." "Truly a pretty tale!" saith my Lady, pretending (as I could see) to look angry. "Now don't try to be angered with me," said Joan, "for I know you cannot. Now I must go and pack my saddle-bags and mails." [Trunks.] She went thence with her light foot, and my Lady looked somewhat sadly after her. "I love thee, do I, child?" saith she in another tone. "Ah, if I do, thou owest it less to anything in thee than to the name they wed thee in. Help us, Mother of Mercy! Time was when I thought I, too, should one day have been a Greystoke. Well, well! God be merciful to us poor dreamers, and poor sinners too!" Then, with slower step than she is wont, she went after Joan. My child is gone, and I feel like a bereaved mother. I shall see her again, if it please God, but what a blank she has left! She says when next Lent comes, if God will, she will visit us, and maybe bring with her her little Laurentia, that she named after my lost love, because she had eyes like his. God bless her, my child Joan! Sister Roberga set forth for Shuldham the same day, in company with Father Benedict, who desired to travel that road, and in charge of two of the brethren and of Sister Willa. I trust she may some day see her errors, and amend her ways: but I cannot felicitate the community at Shuldham on receiving her. So now we shall slip back into our old ways, so far as can be under a Prioress who assuredly will let none of us suffer the moss to grow upon her, body or soul, so far as she can hinder it. I hear her voice now beneath, in the lower corridor, crying to Sister Sigred, who is in the kitchen to-day-- "Did ever man or woman see the like? Burning seacoal on the kitchen-fire! Dost thou mean to poison us all with that ill smoke? [Note 6.] And wood in the wood-house more than we shall use in half a year! Forty logs came in from the King only yesterday, and ten from my Lord of Lisle the week gone. Sister Sigred, when shall I put any sense in you?" "I don't know, Madam, I'm sure!" was poor Sister Sigred's rather hopeless answer. I have found out at last what the world is. I am so glad! I asked Father Mortimer, and I told him how puzzled I was about it.