Old Margery Danby, the housekeeper at Primrose Croft, was more thoroughly trustworthy than Mr Roberts had supposed, not only in will—for which he gave her full credit—but in capacity, which he had doubted. Born in the first year of Henry the Seventh, Margery had heard stirring tales in her childhood from parents who had lived through the Wars of the Roses, and she too well remembered Kett’s rebellion and the enclosure riots in King Edward’s days, not to know that “speech is silvern, but silence is golden.” The quiet, observant old woman knew perfectly well that something was “in the wind.” It was not her master’s wont to look back, and say, “Farewell, Margery!” before he mounted his horse on a Tuesday morning for his weekly visit to the cloth-works; and it was still less usual for Gertrude to remark, “Good-morrow, good Margery!” before she went out for a walk with Jack. Mistress Grena, too, had called her into her own room the night before, and told her she had thought for some time of making her a little present, as a recognition of her long care and fidelity, and had given her two royals—the older name for half-sovereigns. Margery silently “put two and two together,” and the result was to convince her that something was about to happen. Nor did she suffer from any serious doubts as to what it was. She superintended the preparation of supper on that eventful day with a settled conviction that nobody would be at home to eat it; and when the hours passed away, and nobody returned, the excitement of Cicely the chamber-maid, and Dick the scullion-boy, was not in the least shared by her. Moreover, she had seen with some amusement Mr Bastian’s approach and subsequent retreat, and she expected to see him again ere long. When the bell rang the next morning about eight o’clock, Margery went to answer it herself, and found herself confronting the gentleman she had anticipated.
“Christ save all here!” said the priest, in reply to Margery’s reverential curtsey. “Is your master within, good woman?”
“No, Father, an’t like you.”
“No? He is not wont to go forth thus early. Mistress Grena?”
“No, Sir, nor Mistress Gertrude neither.”
The priest lifted his eyebrows. “All hence! whither be they gone?”
“An’ it please you, Sir, I know not.”
“That is strange. Went they together?”
“No, Sir, separate.”
“Said they nought touching their absence?”