“You said Mr. Melville.”

“Mr. Melville is a Protestant, mistress; but he is very well devoted to her Grace, and has done as Mr. Bourgoign wished.”

“Why must her Grace have a priest at once?  Surely for a few days—­”

He glanced up at her, and she, conscious of her own falseness, thought he looked astonished.

“I mean that they will surely give her her priest back, again presently; and”—­(her voice faltered)—­“and Mr. Alban is spent with his travelling.”

“They mean to kill her, mistress.  There is no doubt of it amongst those of us that are Catholics.  And it is that she may have a priest before she dies, that—­”

He paused.

“Yes?” she said.

“Her Grace had a fit of crying, it is said, when her priest was taken from her.  Mr. Melville was crying himself, even though—­”

He stopped, himself plainly affected.

* * * * *

Then, in a great surge, her own heart rose up, and she understood what she was doing.  As in a vision, she saw her own mother crying out for the priest that never came; and she understood that horror of darkness that falls on one who, knowing what the priest can do, knowing the infinite consolations which Christ gives, is deprived, when physical death approaches, of that tremendous strength and comfort.  Indeed, she recognised to the full that when a priest cannot be had, God will save and forgive without him; yet what would be the heartlessness, to say nothing of the guilt, of one that would keep him away?  For what, except that this strength and comfort might be at the service of Christ’s flock, had her own life been spent?  It was expressly for this that she had lived on in England when peace and the cloister might be hers elsewhere; and now that her own life was touched, should she fail?...  The blindness passed like a dream, and her soul rose up again on a wave of pain and exaltation....

“Wait,” she said.  “I will go and awaken him, and bid him come down.”

V

An hour later, as the first streaks of dawn slit the sky to the eastwards over the moors, she stood with Janet and Mistress Alice and Robin by the hall fire.

She had said not a word to any of the struggle she had passed through.  She had gone upstairs resolutely and knocked on his door till he had answered, and then whispered, “The letter is come....  I will have food ready”; slipping the letter beneath the door.

Then she had sent Janet to awaken a couple of men that slept over the stables; and bid them saddle two horses at once; and herself had gone to the buttery to make ready a meal.  Then Mistress Alice had awakened and come downstairs, and the three women had waited on the priest, as, in boots and cloak, he had taken some food.

Then, as the sound of the horses’ feet coming round from the stables at the back had reached them, she had determined to tell Robin before he went of how she had played the coward.