“Yes?”

“His name is Ballard.  He is known as Fortescue, and passes himself off as a captain.  You would never know him for a priest.”

“He is returning, you say?”

A shade of embarrassment passed over the young man’s face, and Marjorie saw that there was something behind which she was not to know.

“Yes,” he said, “I have business with him.  He is not to come over on the mission yet, but only to bring the others and see them safe—­”

He broke off suddenly.

“Why, I was forgetting,” he cried.  “Our Robin is coming too.  I had a letter from him, and another for you.”

He searched in the breast of his coat, and did not see the sudden rigidity that fell on the girl.  For a moment she sat perfectly still; her heart had leapt to her throat, it seemed, and was hammering there....  But by the time he had found the letter she was herself again.

“Here it is,” he said.

She took it; but made no movement to open it.

“But he is not to be a priest for five years yet?” she said quietly.

“No; but they send them sometimes as servants and such like, to make a party seem what it is not, as well as to learn how to avoid her Grace’s servants.  He will go back with Mr. Ballard, I think, after three or four weeks.  You have had letters from him, you told me?”

She nodded.

“Yes; but he said nothing of it, but only how much he longed to see England again.”

“He could not.  It has only just been arranged.  He has asked to go.”

There was a silence for a moment.  But Anthony did not understand what it meant.  He had known nothing of the affair of his friend and this girl, and he looked upon them merely as a pair of acquaintances, above all, when he had heard of Robin’s determination to go to Rheims.  Even the girl saw that he knew nothing, in spite of her embarrassment, and the thought that had come to her when she had heard of Robin’s coming to London grew on her every moment.  But she thought she must gain time.

She stood up.

“You would like to see his letters?” she asked.  “I will bring them.”

And she slipped out of the room.

II

Anthony Babington sat still, staring up at Icarus in the chariot of the
Sun, with something of a moody look on his face.

It was true that he was sincere and active enough in all that he did up here in the north for the priests of his faith; indeed, he risked both property and liberty on their behalf, and was willing to continue doing so as long as these were left to him.  But it seemed to him sometimes that too much was done by spiritual ways and too little by temporal.  Certainly the priesthood and the mass were instruments—­and, indeed, the highest instruments in God’s hand; it was necessary to pray and receive the sacraments, and to run every risk in life for these purposes.  Yet it appeared to him that the highest instruments were not always the best for such rough work.