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."