ad 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.]

Philippa was silent from astonishment.

"Go on," said the nun. "What did she to thee?"

"She did little," said Philippa in a low voice. "She only left undone."

"Ah!" replied Mother Joan. "The one half of the _Confiteor_. The other
commonly marcheth apace behind."

"Then," said Philippa, "my mother was--"

"Isabel La Despenser, younger daughter of the Lord Hugh Le Despenser the
younger, Earl of Gloucester, and grand-daughter of Hugh the elder, Earl
of Winchester. Thou knowest their names well, if not hers."

"I know nothing about them," replied Philippa, shaking her head. "None
ever told me. I only remember to have heard them named at Arundel as
very wicked persons, and rebels against the King."

"Holy Virgin!" cried Mother Joan. "Rebels!--against which King?"

"I do not know," answered Philippa.

"But I do!" exclaimed the blind woman, bitterly. "Rebels against a
rebel! Traitors to a traitress! God reward Isabelle of France for all
the shame and ruin that she brought