"I never cared for the scorn of these other creatures," she said in a low troubled voice. "I could give them back scorn for scorn. But it will be hard to be scorned by the child whom I saved from death." "Mother! I scorn you? Why, the thing could not be. You are all the world to me." "It will not be so always, my son. Howbeit, thou shalt hear the truth. Rudolph, I am a Jewess. My old name is Countess, the daughter of Benefei of Oxford." "Mother," said Rudolph softly, "you are what our Lady was. If I could scorn you, it would not be honouring her." "True enough, boy: but thou wilt not find the world say so." "If the world speak ill of you, Mother, I will have none of it! Now please tell me about others. Who was Mother Isel?" "A very dear and true friend of thy parents." "And Ermine?" "Thy father's sister--one of the best and sweetest maidens that God ever made." "Is it my father that I remember, with the grave blue eyes--the man who read in the book?" "I have no doubt of it. It is odd--" and a smile flitted over Countess's lips--"that all thou canst recollect of thy mother should be her checked apron." Rudolph laughed. "Then who is the stern man, and who the merry one?" "I should guess the stern man to be Manning Brown, the husband of Isel. The merry, pleasant-faced man, I think, must be his nephew Stephen. `Stephen the Watchdog' they used to call him; he was one of the Castle watchmen." "At Oxford? Was it Oxford, then, where we used to live?" "It was Oxford." "I should like to go there again." "Take heed thou do not so. Thou are so like both thy father and mother that I should fear for thy safety. No one would know me, I think. But for thee I am not so sure. And if they were to guess who thou art, they would have thee up before the bishops, and question thee, and brand thee with the dreadful name of `heretic,' as they did to thy parents." "Mother, why would they do these things?--why did they do them?" "Because they loved idols, and after them they would go. We worship only the Lord our God, blessed be He! And thou wilt find always, Rudolph, that not only doth light hate darkness, but the darkness also hateth the light, and tries hard to extinguish it." "Yet if they worship the same God that we do--"