“Mother,” said Rudolph softly, “you are what our Lady was. If I could scorn you, it would not be honouring her.”
“True enough, boy: but thou wilt not find the world say so.”
“If the world speak ill of you, Mother, I will have none of it! Now please tell me about others. Who was Mother Isel?”
“A very dear and true friend of thy parents.”
“And Ermine?”
“Thy father’s sister—one of the best and sweetest maidens that God ever made.”
“Is it my father that I remember, with the grave blue eyes—the man who read in the book?”
“I have no doubt of it. It is odd—” and a smile flitted over Countess’s lips—“that all thou canst recollect of thy mother should be her checked apron.”
Rudolph laughed. “Then who is the stern man, and who the merry one?”
“I should guess the stern man to be Manning Brown, the husband of Isel. The merry, pleasant-faced man, I think, must be his nephew Stephen. ‘Stephen the Watchdog’ they used to call him; he was one of the Castle watchmen.”