“And I think I do,” said Mr. Buxton softly.
“Eh?” exclaimed Mary, “you do what?” She had quite forgotten her last sentence.
“It is no matter,” he said yet more softly; and would say no more.
Presently the talk fell on the Maxwells; and came round to Hubert.
“They say he would be a favourite at Court,” said Mary, “had he not a wife. But her Grace likes not married men. She looked kindly upon him at Deptford, I know; and I have seen him at Greenwich. You know, of course, about Isabel?”
Mr. Buxton shook his head.
“Why, it was common talk that they would have been man and wife years ago, had not the fool apostatised.”
Her companion questioned her further, and soon had the whole story out of her. “But I am thankful,” ended Mary, “that it has so ended.”
The next day she went back to Court; and it was with real grief that the three watched her wonderful plumed riding-hat trot along behind the top of the churchyard wall, with her woman beside her, and her little liveried troop of men following at a distance.
The days passed by, bringing strange tidings to Stanfield. News continued to reach the Catholics of the good confessions witnessed here and there in England by priests and laity. At the end of July, three priests, Garlick, Ludlam and Sympson, had been executed at Derby, and at the end of August the defeat of the Armada seemed to encourage Elizabeth yet further, and Mr. Leigh, a priest, with four laymen and Mistress Margaret Ward, died for their religion at Tyburn.