"Recollect you your offer to join the congregation?"
"It was but a stratagem."
"But so could she not understand it. Besides, she mistrusted thine intimacy with Winthrop, and his influence over thee."
"I loved the man for his gracious qualities, heretic though he be; but he never influenced me."
"The intense zeal of Celestina, guided only by her womanly instincts, was unable to comprehend thy feeling. She communicated her suspicions to the Father, and it was his pleasure to receive them as truths and act accordingly. It was the father who wrote the letters, signing thereto feigned names, and charging thee with crimes as feigned. It was he who, to avert suspicion from our order (for news had come that the jealousy of the prick-ear'd heretics was aroused, and that they were on sharp look-out for Catholics,) hesitated not to slander the Sister, his own confidential agent, trusting, by the magnitude and foulness of the charges, so to fill the minds of your judges, that other surmises would be thrust out, and thus the ground be preserved for further operations."
"I understand," said the Knight, "that my successor has departed."
"He has gone. Sister Celestina, in her elevation, forgets her temporary humiliation, and Sir Christopher Gardiner—"
"Is the victim of a woman's suspicions and of a monk's policy. Albert, I thank thee; my mind is now at ease, and I shall no longer beat the air in vain attempts to discover my accusers; unsubstantial figments of the Father's imagination. But why told you me not on my arrival in London, when I did so eagerly search for the infamous varlets who had attempted to attaint my honor, and when vain, of course, were my exertions?"
"I was not then permitted. And now, I rely upon thy discretion to bury the secret in thy breast. Any other course might be fatal to us both."
"Fear me not," said Sir Christopher. "I have been examining my heart, and find I bear no malice against the holy Father. It was time we should be removed, and the means, though harsh, were politic; for suspicions of our being Catholics were rife, and what may sound strangely, our friendship, Albert, served to confirm them."