“My laugh will never hurt you,” answered she. “But truly, betwixt Sister Ada and the peacock—They both spread their plumes to be looked at. I wonder which Father Mortimer will admire most.”
“You surely never mean,” said I, much shocked, “that Sister Ada expects Father Mortimer to admire her!”
“Oh, she means nothing ill,” said Sister Gaillarde. “She only admires Ada Mansell so thoroughly herself, that she cannot conceive it possible that any one can do otherwise. Let her spread her feathers—it won’t hurt. Any way, it will not hurt him. He isn’t that sort of animal.”
Indeed, I hope he is not.
When my Lady dismissed us, I went to my work in the illumination-room, where Joan, with Sister Annot and Sister Josia, awaited my coming. I bade Sister Josia finish the Holy Family she was painting yesterday for a missal which we are preparing for my Lord’s Grace of York; I told Sister Annot to lay the gold leaf on the Book of Hours writing for my Lady of Suffolk; and as Margaret, who commonly works with her, was not yet come, I began myself to show Joan how to coil up the tail of a griffin—she said, to put a yard of tail into an inch of parchment. It appeared to amuse her very much to see how I twisted and interlaced the tracery, so as to fill up every little corner of the parallelogram. When the outline was drawn, and she began to fill it with cobalt, as I sat by, she said suddenly yet softly—
“Mother Annora, I have been considering whether I should tell you something.”
“Tell me what, dear child?” quoth I.
“I am afraid,” said she, “I shocked you yesterday, making you think I was scarcely sound in the faith. Yet where can lie the verity of the faith, if not in Holy Writ? And I marvelled if it should aggrieve you less, if you knew one thing—yet that might give you pain.”
“Let me hear it, Joan.”
“Did you know,” said she, dropping her voice low, “that it was in part for heresy that your own father suffered death?”