rist unwemmed kept Custance," or oftener yet--

"But what visage had she thereto?
Alas, my heart is wonder woe
That I ne can discriven it
Me lacketh both English and wit...
For certes Nature had such lest
To make that fair, that truly she
Was her chief patron of beaute,
And chief ensample of all her work
And monstre--for be 't ne'er so derk,
Methinketh I see her evermo'!"

[Note: Monstre was then employed in the sense in which we now use
_phoenix_.]

But this, as has been said, was only now and then. The words which were
far more common were Wycliffe's; and those which were invariable were
Christ's.

When Maude began this work, she had not the remotest idea of changing
her faith, nor even of inquiring into the grounds on which it rested.
She entertained no personal prejudice against the Lollards, with whom
she associated her dead mistress the Infanta, and her young murdered
master; but she vaguely supposed their doctrines to be somehow
unorthodox, and considered herself as good a "Catholic" as any one. She
noticed that Father Ademar gave her fewer penances than Father Dominic
used to do; that he treated her mistakes as mistakes only, and not as
sins; that generally his ideas of sin had to do rather with the root of
evil in the heart than with the diligent pruning of particular branches;
that he said a great deal about Christ, and not much about the saints.
So Maude's change of opinion came, over her so gradually and noiselessly
that she never realised herself to have undergone any change at all
until it was unalterable and complete.

The realisation came suddenly at last, with a passing word from Dame
Audrey, the mistress of the household at Cardiff.

"Nay," she had said, a little contemptuously, in answer to some remark:
"Mistress Maude is too good to consort with us poor Catholics. She is a
great clerk, quotha! and hath Sir John de Wycliffe his homilies and
evangels at her tongue's end. Marry, I count in another twelvemonth
every soul in this Castle saving me shall be a Lollard."

Maude was startled. Was the charge true--that she was no longer a
"Catholic," but a Lollard? And if so, in what did the change consist of
which she was herself unconscious?

That afternoon, when she sat down to read to the Dowager as usual, Maude
asked timidly--

"Madam, under your Ladyship's good leave, there is a thing I would fain
ask at you."

"Ask freely, my maid," was the kindly answer.

"Mi