“Eh, yes, I did.”

Another long pause followed, which was painful alike to both.

The baron’s agitation increased, and it did not need any great exercise of shrewdness to guess the cause.  The lover guessed it intuitively, and deftly altered the topic which was just about to be broached.

“Poor Father Philip is gone,” he exclaimed in a sympathetic tone.

“Ye-e-s,” slowly assented the baron.

“And you miss him, I perceive,” pursued the esquire tremulously.

“Very true, but—­”

“And I hear Nicholas Bury is about to depart,” hazarded Manners, interrupting the baron.

“Eh! what?” exclaimed Sir George.  “Father Nicholas going?”

“He has informed Everard so.”

“No, he must stay,” returned the knight, banishing the wrinkles that had contracted his brow; “of course he must stay.”

He was clearly off his guard now, and Manners breathed easier again; for, thanks to the efforts of Dorothy and Crowleigh, as well as to his own perceptions, he was by no means ignorant of the conspiracy of which he was the victim, and he wished to procrastinate the inevitable interview until a more favourable time presented itself for the purpose.

“Where did he come from?” continued the baron, drifting innocently farther and farther away from the purpose of the interview.

“Am I to trust thee with his secret then?” asked the lover.

“Of course, let me know all.  I shall protect him, come what will.”

“Then he is Sir Ronald Bury’s brother.”

“He is a better man than his brother, then,” exclaimed Sir George, when he had overcome his astonishment.  “Did Sir Everard fetch him from Nottingham?”

“Nay, from Dale Abbey.”

“Ha!” ejaculated the baron, “say you so?  The abbey is dismantled, and methought I knew every Catholic in the shire.”

“Then, Sir George, you forgot the hermitage,” was the prompt reply.

Sir George had just caught sight of his good lady through the open lattice window, and as he saw her wending her way quickly along the path it painfully recalled him to a sense of his position.

“I sent for thee,” he said suddenly, changing the conversation and knitting his brow, “because I wished to see thee on a matter of much importance.”

“I am honoured by your confidence,” promptly returned the esquire, making a gallant effort to escape the subject, “but pray on no account tell either Everard or Nicholas that it was I who gave the information.  I was charged to tell no man, by my honour.”

Unluckily, Lady Vernon passed the door just as he was speaking, and the sound of her footsteps kept the subject too well in the baron’s mind for him to wander from it again.

“About Dorothy,” he explained, ignoring the last remark.

Manners was nonplussed; he attempted no rejoinder, and the baron paced the room again in great perturbation.  At length he stopped.