“One that thou knewest once,” answered Isabel’s quivering voice.
“From Heaven?” cried Joan almost wildly. “Can the dead come back again?” And she stretched forth her hands in the direction from which the sound of her sister’s voice had come.
“No, but the living may,” said Isabel, kneeling down by her, and clasping her arms around her.
“Isabel!” And Joan’s trembling hands were passed over her face, as if to assure herself that her ears had not deceived her. “It can be no voice but thine. Holy Virgin, I thank thee!”
The Abbess broke in, in a manner which, though well-meant, was exceedingly ill-timed and in bad taste. She was kindly-disposed, but had not the faintest trace of that delicate perception of others’ feelings, and consideration for them, which constitutes the real difference between Nature’s ladies and such as are not ladies.
“Verily, to think that this holy Mother and our Mother Joan be sisters!” cried she, “I remember somewhat of your history, my holy Sister: are you not she that was sometime Countess of Arundel?”
Philippa saw how Isabel trembled from head to foot; but she knew not what to say. Joan La Despenser was equal to the emergency.
“Holy Mother,” she said quietly, “would it please you, of your great goodness, to permit me to remain here during the recreation-hour with my sister? I am assured we shall have much to say each to other, if we may have your blessed allowance to speak freely after this manner.”
“Be it so, Sister,” said the Abbess, smiling genially; “I will see to our sisters in the recreation-chamber.”
A long conversation followed the departure of the Abbess. Joan took up the history where she had parted from Isabel, and told what had been her own lot since then; and Isabel in her turn recounted her story—neither a long nor an eventful one; for it told only how she had been taken to Sempringham by the page, and had there settled herself, in the hermit’s cell which happened to be vacant.