The landing in England had been easier, he said, than he had thought, though he had learned afterwards that a helpful young man, who had offered to show him to an inn in Folkestone, and in whose presence Mr. Ballard had taken care to give him a good rating for dropping a bag—­with loud oaths—­was a well-known informer.  However, no harm was done:  Mr. Ballard’s admirable bearing, and his oaths in particular, had seemed to satisfy the young man, and he had troubled them no more.

Marjorie did not say much.  She listened with a fierce attention, so much interested that she was scarcely aware of her own interest; she looked up, half betrayed into annoyance, when a placid laugh from Mistress Alice at the table showed that another was listening too.

She too, then, had to give her news, and to receive messages for the Derbyshire folk whom Robin wished to greet; and it was not until Mistress Alice slipped out of the room that she uttered a word of what she had been hoping all day she might have an opportunity to say.

“Mr. Audrey,” she said (for she was careful to use this form of address), “I wish you to pray for me.  I do not know what to do.”

He was silent.

“At present,” she said, gathering courage, “my duty is clear.  I must be at home, for my mother’s sake, if for nothing else.  And, as I told you, I think I shall be able to do something for priests.  But if my mother died—­”

“Yes?” he said, as she stopped again.

She glanced up at his serious, deep-eyed face, half in shadow and half in light, so familiar, and yet so utterly apart from the boy she had known.

“Well,” she said, “I think of you as a priest already, and I can speak to you freely....  Well, I am not sure whether I, too, shall not go overseas, to serve God better.”

“You mean—­”

“Yes.  A dozen or more are gone from Derbyshire, whose names I know.  Some are gone to Bruges; two or three to Rome; two or three more to Spain.  We women cannot do what priests can, but, at least, we can serve God in Religion.”

She looked at him again, expecting an answer.  She saw him move his head, as if to answer.  Then he smiled suddenly.

“Well, however you look at me, I am not a priest....  You had best speak to one—­Father Campion or another.”

“But—­”

“And I will pray for you,” he said with an air of finality.

Then Mistress Alice came back.

* * * * *

She never forgot, all her life long, the little scene that took place when Captain Fortescue came in with Mr. Babington, to fetch Robin away.  Yet the whole of its vividness rose from its interior significance.  Externally here was a quiet parlour; two ladies—­for the girl afterwards seemed to see herself in the picture—­stood by the fireplace; Mistress Alice still held her needlework gathered up in one hand, and her spools of thread and a pin-cushion lay on the polished table.  And