“Whose, then? Quick!” cried Mother Joan, in accents of passionate earnestness.
“Who was my mother,” answered Philippa, “I cannot tell you, for I was never told myself. All that I know of her I had but from a poor lavender, that spake well of her, and she called her the Lady Isabel.”
“Isabel! Isabel!”
Philippa was deeply touched; for the name, twice repeated, broke in a wail of tender, mournful love, from the lips of the blind nun.
“Mother,” she pleaded, “if you know anything of her, for the holy Virgin’s love tell it to me, her child. I have missed her and longed for her all my life. Surely I have a right to know her story who gave me that life!”
“Thou shalt know,” responded Mother Joan in a choked voice. “But, child, name me Mother Joan no longer. Call me what I am to thee—Aunt. Thy mother was my sister.”
And then Philippa knew that she stood upon the threshold of all her long-nursed hopes.
“But tell me first,” pursued the nun, “how that upstart treated thee—Alianora.”
“She was not unkind to me,” answered Philippa hesitatingly. “She did not give me precedence over her daughters, but then she is of the blood royal, and I am not. But—”
“Not royal!” exclaimed Mother Joan in extremely treble tones. “Have they brought thee up so ignorantly as that? Not of the blood royal, quotha! Child, by our Lady’s hosen, thou art fifty-three steps nearer the throne than she! We were daughters of Alianora, whose mother was Joan of Acon, (Acre, where Joan was born), daughter of King Edward of Westminster; and she is but the daughter of Henry, the son of Edmund, son of Henry of Winchester.” (Henry the Third.)