The great realities were closing round her, as irresistible as wheels and bars.  There was scarcely a period in her life, scarcely a voluntary action of hers for good or evil, that did not furnish some part of this vast machine in whose grip both she and her friend were held so fast.  No calculation on her part could have contrived so complete a climax; yet hardly a calculation that had not gone astray from that end to which she had designed it.  It was as if some monstrous and ironical power had been beneath and about her all her life long, using those thoughts and actions that she had intended in one way to the development of another.

First, it was she that had first turned her friend’s mind to the life of a priest.  Had she submitted to natural causes, she would have been his wife nine years ago; they would have been harassed no doubt and troubled, but no more.  It was she again that had encouraged his return to Derbyshire.  If it had not been for that, and for the efforts she had made to do what she thought good work for God, he might have been sent elsewhere.  It was in her house that he had been taken, and in the very place she had designed for his safety.  If she had but sent him on, as he wished, back to the hills again, he might never have been taken at all.  These, and a score of other thoughts, had raced continually through her mind; she felt even as if she were responsible for the manner of his taking, and for the horror that it had been his father who had accomplished it; if she had said more, or less, in the hall of that dark morning; if she had not swooned; if she had said bravely:  “It is your son, sir, who is here,” all might have been saved.  And now it was Topcliffe who was come—­(and she knew all that this signified)—­the very man at whose mere bodily presence she had sickened in the court of the Tower.  And, last, it was she who had to tell Robin of this.

So tremendous, however, had been the weight of these thoughts upon her, crowned and clinched (so to say) by finding that the priest was even in the same cell as that in which she had visited the traitor, that there was no room any more for bitterness.  Even as she waited, with Mr. Biddell behind her, as the gaoler fumbled with the keys, she was aware that the last breath of resentment had been drawn....  It was, indeed, a monstrous Power that had so dealt with her....  It was none other than the Will of God, plain at last.

* * * * *

She knelt down for the priest’s blessing, without speaking, as the door closed, and Mr. Biddell knelt behind her.  Then she rose and went forward to the stool and sat upon it.

* * * * *

He was hardly changed at all.  He looked a little white and drawn in the wavering light of the flambeau; but his clothes were orderly and clean, and his eyes as bright and resolute as ever.

“It is a great happiness to see you,” he said, smiling, and then no more compliments.