Moreover, Emma had little heart for such entertainment, which chiefly served to bring back memories of happier days, when Earl Roger and Ralph de Guader had been beside her; and all the prowess of her Danish hawk did but remind her of her husband and his dangers. Soar, and stoop, and chancelier as he might, he failed to move her enthusiasm, and did but render her more sad, while the encomiums of Sir Alain De Gourin, who made a point of attending her on these expeditions, irked rather than pleased her. His criticisms, admiring as they were, seemed to her impertinent when passed on a bird which Ralph de Guader had pronounced as one of the most perfect he had ever seen. So she strove to cheat the hours by embroidering a magnificent mantle for her absent lord, using all the most elaborate Saxon stitches, which she had learned from Eadgyth, who sat ever at her elbow to help her, if she forgot her lesson. Such gorgeous mantles were much in fashion among the Norman exquisites. Eadgyth herself was busy, by Emma's desire, making an altar-cloth for the chapel of the castle, in which the De Guader and East Anglian arms were mingled somewhat incongruously with pictorial illustrations of the life of St. Nicholas. The chaplain of the aforesaid chapel had drawn the designs, being a very clever limner and illuminator, and he took great interest in the progress of the pious work, losing no opportunity to visit the fair embroideress when she was engaged upon it. He was a young Breton of good family, but had sunk his patronymic for the priestly 'Father Pierre,' the venerable title being rather incongruous to his boyish face and shy, shrinking ways. He was an ascetic enthusiast, believing sternly in the mortification of the flesh, and his young cheeks were sunken, his large dark eyes hollow and glittering, and his tall figure painfully emaciated. But his sternness was all for himself; to his flock he was the kindest of pastors, and in his humility he did not venture to enter upon political matters, accepting the judgment of his feudal superior as paramount, and not to be questioned. Emma did not feel drawn to him. Her practical nature could not comprehend or draw comfort from his mystic and dreamy ecstasies, and she needed a strong, clear-headed guide, to advise her on the tangible and imminent perplexities that encircled her.