For Anne Mortimer was one of those hapless girls who are not motherless, but what is far worse, unmothered. Her father, who lay in his bloody grave in Ireland, she had loved dearly; but her mother was a mere stranger somewhere in the world, who had never cared for her at all. To the younger ones Anne herself had been the virtual mother; they had been tended by her fostering care, but who save God had ever tended her? Thus, from the time of her father's death, when she was eight years old, Anne's life had been a flowerless, up-hill road, with nothing to look forward to at the end. Was it any wonder that the face looked worn with care, though only fifteen years had passed over it? The sole breaks to the monotony of this weary life occurred when the Court was at Windsor. Then the poor little prisoners were permitted to come out of durance, and--still under strict surveillance--to join the royal party. These times were delightful to the younger three, but they would have been periods of unmixed pain to Anne, if it had not been for the presence and uniform kindness of one person. She shuddered within herself when the King or his Mentor the Archbishop addressed her, shrinking from both with the instinctive aversion of a song-bird to a serpent; but Richard of Conisborough spoke as no one else spoke to her-- so courteously, so gently, so kindly, that no room was left for fear. No one had ever spoken so to this girl since her father died. And thus, without the faintest suspicion of his feelings towards her, the lonely maiden's imagination wove its sweet fancies around this hero of her dreams, and she began unconsciously to look forward to the time when she should meet him again. Well for her that it was so! for she was a "pale meek blossom" unsuited for rough blasts, and the only ray of sunshine which was ever to fall across her life lay in the love of Richard of Conisborough. "Who is it?" Anne repeated, in a rather less frightened tone. "Hast thou forgot me, Nannette?" said Constance affectionately. "I am the Lady Le Despenser--thine aunt now, the wife of thine uncle of Kent." "Oh!" responded Anne, with a long-drawn sigh of relief. The tone said, "How delightful!" "I thought you were a ghost." "Well, so I am, but within the body," whispered Constance with a little laugh. "That makes all the difference," said Anne, whose response did not go beyond a faint smile. "Has your Ladyship then won allowance to visit us?" Her voice expressed some surprise, for certainly the middle of the night was a singular time for a visitor to choose for a call. "Nay, sweet heart. I come without allowance--hush!--to bear you all away hence. Wake thy sister, and arise both, and busk [dress] you quickly. Where be thy brothers?" "In the inner cowche," [bedroom].