There was a sound of talking from the interior of the car, hasty, breathless voices, questioning, exclaiming, and the authoritative terse answer of the guard.  A step came along outside, and Percy sprang to meet it, but, as he laid his hand on the door, it was pushed from without, and to his astonishment the English guard came straight through, closing it behind him.

He stood there, looking strangely at the four priests, with compressed lips and anxious eyes.

“Well?” cried Percy.

“All right, gentlemen.  But I’m thinking you’d better descend at Paris.  I know who you are, gentlemen—­and though I’m not a Catholic—–­”

He stopped again.

“For God’s sake, man—–­” began Percy.

“Oh! the news, gentlemen.  Well, it was two hundred cars going to Rome.  There is a Catholic plot, sir, discovered in London—–­”

“Well?”

“To wipe out the Abbey.  So they’re going—–­”

“Ah!”

“Yes, sir—­to wipe out Rome.”

Then he was gone again.

CHAPTER VII

I

It was nearly sixteen o’clock on the same day, the last day of the year, that Mabel went into the little church that stood in the street beneath her house.

The dark was falling softly layer on layer; across the roofs to westward burned the smouldering fire of the winter sunset, and the interior was full of the dying light.  She had slept a little in her chair that afternoon, and had awakened with that strange cleansed sense of spirit and mind that sometimes follows such sleep.  She wondered later how she could have slept at such a time, and above all, how it was that she had perceived nothing of that cloud of fear and fury that even now was falling over town and country alike.  She remembered afterwards an unusual busy-ness on the broad tracks beneath her as she had looked out on them from her windows, and an unusual calling of horns and whistles; but she thought nothing of it, and passed down an hour later for a meditation in the church.

She had grown to love the quiet place, and came in often like this to steady her thoughts and concentrate them on the significance that lay beneath the surface of life—­the huge principles upon which all lived, and which so plainly were the true realities.  Indeed, such devotion was becoming almost recognised among certain classes of people.  Addresses were delivered now and then; little books were being published as guides to the interior life, curiously resembling the old Catholic books on mental prayer.

She went to-day to her usual seat, sat down, folded her hands, looked for a minute or two upon the old stone sanctuary, the white image and the darkening window.  Then she closed her eyes and began to think, according to the method she followed.

First she concentrated her attention on herself, detaching it from all that was merely external and transitory, withdrawing it inwards ... inwards, until she found that secret spark which, beneath all frailties and activities, made her a substantial member of the divine race of humankind.