Certainly it might, so far as Constance was concerned. She was so weary of her isolation that she would have welcomed even the Duchess Joan. She bade the immediate admission of the nuns, who were evidently provided with permission from the authorities. They were both tall women, but with that item the likeness began and ended. One was a fair-complexioned woman of forty years,--stern-looking, spare, haggard-faced,--in whose cold blue eyes there might be intelligence, but there was no warmth of human kindness. The other was a comfortable-looking girl of eighteen, rosy-cheeked, with dark eyes and hair. "Christ save you, holy sisters!" said Constance as they approached her. "Ye be of these parts, trow?" "Nay," answered the younger nun, "we be of the House of Minoresses beyond Aldgate; and though thine eyes have not told thee so much, Custance, I am Isabel of Pleshy." "Lady Isabel of Pleshy! Be right welcome, fair cousin mine!" Isabel was the youngest daughter of that Duke of Gloucester who had been for so many years the evil angel of King and realm. Constance had not seen her since childhood, so that it was no wonder that she failed to recognise her. Meanwhile Maude had turned courteously to the elder nun. "Pray you, take the pain to sit in the window." "I never sit," replied the nun in a harsh, rasping voice. "Truly, that is more than I could say," observed Maude with a smile. "Shall it like you to drink a draught of small ale?" "I never drink ale." This assertion would not sound strange to us, but it was astounding to Maude. "Would you ipocras and spice rather?" "I never eat spice." "Will you eat a marchpane?" "I never eat marchpane." Maude wondered what this impracticable being did condescend to do. "Then a shive of bread and tryacle?" "Bread, an' you will: I am no babe, that I should lack sugar and tryacle." Maude procured refreshments, and the elder nun, first making the sign of the cross over her dry bread, began to eat; while Lady Isabel, who evidently had not reached an equal height of monastic sanctity, did not refuse any of the good things offered. But when Maude attempted further conversation, the ascetic and acetic lady, intimating that it was prayer-time, and she could talk no more, pulled forth a huge rosary of wooden beads, from which the paint was nearly worn away, and began muttering Ave Marys in apparently interminable succession. "Now, Isabel," said Constance, "prithee do me to wit of divers matters I would fain know. Mind thou, I have been shut up from all manner of tidings, good or ill, sithence this last March, and I have a sumpter-mule's load of questions to ask at thee. But, first of all, how earnest thou hither?" "Maybe thou shalt find so much in the answers to thy questions," replied Isabel--a smile parting her lips which had in it more keenness than mirth. "Well, then, to fall to:--Where is my Lord?" "In Tewkesbury Abbey, as methought."