The realisation came suddenly at last, with a passing word from Dame Audrey, the mistress of the household at Cardiff. "Nay," she had said, a little contemptuously, in answer to some remark: "Mistress Maude is too good to consort with us poor Catholics. She is a great clerk, quotha! and hath Sir John de Wycliffe his homilies and evangels at her tongue's end. Marry, I count in another twelvemonth every soul in this Castle saving me shall be a Lollard." Maude was startled. Was the charge true--that she was no longer a "Catholic," but a Lollard? And if so, in what did the change consist of which she was herself unconscious? That afternoon, when she sat down to read to the Dowager as usual, Maude asked timidly-- "Madam, under your Ladyship's good leave, there is a thing I would fain ask at you." "Ask freely, my maid," was the kindly answer. "Might it like you to arede me, Madam, of your grace--in what regard, and to what greatness, the Lollards do differ from the Catholics?" The Dowager smiled, but she looked a little surprised. "A short question, forsooth, my maid, the which to answer shortly should lack sharper wit than mine. But I will give thee to wit so far as I can. We do believe that all things which be needful for a Christian man to know, be founden in God's Word, yclept Holy Scripture: so that all other our differences take root in this one. For the which encheson [reason] we do deny the Pope to have right and rule over this our Church of England, which lieth not in his diocese, neither find we in Holy Scripture that the Bishop of Rome should wield rule over other Bishops; but that in every realm the King thereof should be highest in estate over the priests as over any other of his subjects. Wherefore likewise we call not upon the saints, seeing that Holy Scripture saith `oo God and a Mediatour is of God and of men, a man, Crist Jesu:' neither may we allow the holy bread of the blessed Sacrament of the Altar to be the very carnal flesh of our Saviour Christ, there bodily present, seeing both that Paul sayeth of it `this breed' after that it be consecrate, and moreover that our own very bodily senses do deny it to be any other matter. So neither will any of us use swearing, which is utterly forbid in God's Word; neither hold we good the right of sanctuary, ne the power of the Pope's indulgence, ne virginity of the priesthood--seeing that no one of all these be bidden by Holy Scripture." The old lady paused, and cut off her loose threads before she continued, in a rather more constrained voice.