“Too great a risk to run,” said the Countess, gravely. “If any inquiration be made for you, and you not found here, the officers of justice should go straight thither. No: I will visit my Lady Lettice myself, and soften the thing as best I may to her and to Mrs Louvaine. The only thing,” she paused a moment in thought. “What other friends have you in London?”
“Truly, none, Madam, save my cousin David—”
“Not a relative. Is there no clergyman that knows you, who is of good account, and a staunch Protestant?”
“There is truly Mr Marshall, a friend of my grandmother, and an ejected Puritan.”
“Where dwelleth he?”
“In Shoe Lane, Madam.”
“Is he a wise and discreet man?”
“I think, Madam, my grandmother holds him for such.”
“It is possible,” said Lady Oxford, meditatively, “that you might be safe in his house for a day or two, and your friends from the White Bear could go as if to see him and his wife—hath he a wife?”
“He buried his wife this last summer, Madam: he hath a daughter that keeps his house, of about mine own years.”