When Maude became able to read well, she was installed in the post of daily reader to the Dowager. Constance had never cared for books; but the old lady, who had been a great reader for her time, missed her usual luxury now that age was dimming her eyes, and was very glad to employ Maude's younger sight. The book was nearly always one of Wycliffe's, and the reading invariably closed with a chapter of his Testament. Now and then, but only now and then, she would ask for a little poetry-- taking by preference that courtly writer whom she knew as a great innovator, but whom we call the father of English poetry. But she was very particular which of his poems was selected. The Knight's, the Squire's, the Man of Law's, the Prioress's, and the Clerk's Tales, were all that she would have of that book by which we know Geoffrey Chaucer best. She liked better the graceful fairy tale of the Flower and the Leaf, written for the deceased Lollard Queen; and best of all that most pathetic lamentation for the Duchess Blanche of Lancaster, whom Elizabeth Le Despenser had known personally in her youth. Maude would never have suspected the Dowager of the least respect for poetry; and she was surprised to watch her sit by the open casement, dreamily looking out on the landscape, while she read to her of the "white ycrowned Queen" of the Daisy, or of the providential interpositions by which "Crist unwemmed kept Custance," or oftener yet-- "But what visage had she thereto? Alas, my heart is wonder woe That I ne can discriven it Me lacketh both English and wit... For certes Nature had such lest To make that fair, that truly she Was her chief patron of beaute, And chief ensample of all her work And monstre--for be 't ne'er so derk, Methinketh I see her evermo'!" [Note: Monstre was then employed in the sense in which we now use _phoenix_.] But this, as has been said, was only now and then. The words which were far more common were Wycliffe's; and those which were invariable were Christ's. When Maude began this work, she had not the remotest idea of changing her faith, nor even of inquiring into the grounds on which it rested. She entertained no personal prejudice against the Lollards, with whom she associated her dead mistress the Infanta, and her young murdered master; but she vaguely supposed their doctrines to be somehow unorthodox, and considered herself as good a "Catholic" as any one. She noticed that Father Ademar gave her fewer penances than Father Dominic used to do; that he treated her mistakes as mistakes only, and not as sins; that generally his ideas of sin had to do rather with the root of evil in the heart than with the diligent pruning of particular branches; that he said a great deal about Christ, and not much about the saints. So Maude's change of opinion came, over her so gradually and noiselessly that she never realised herself to have undergone any change at all until it was unalterable and complete.