ad told him that there was no talk yet of any formal
trial)--"no hope that I may meet my accusers face to face? I had thought
perhaps--"

He lifted his eyes swiftly to hers, and dropped them again.

She shook her head.

"And yet that is all that I ask now--only to meet my accusers. They can
prove nothing against me--except, indeed, my recusancy; and that they
have known this long time back. They can prove nothing as to the
harbouring of any priests--not within the last year, at any rate, for I
have not done so. It seemed to me--"

He stopped again, and passed his shaking hand over his mouth, eyeing the
two women with momentary glances, and then looking down once more.

"Yes?" said Marjorie.

He slipped off from the table, and began to move about restlessly.

"I have done nothing--nothing at all," he said. "Indeed, I thought--"
And once more he was silent.

* * * * *

He began to talk presently of the Derbyshire hills of Padley and of
Norbury. He asked his wife of news from home, and she gave it him,
interrupting herself with laments. Yet all the while his eyes strayed to
Marjorie as if there was something he would ask of her, but could not.
He seemed completely unnerved, and for the first time in her life the
girl began to understand something of what gaol-life must signify. She
had heard of death and the painful Question; and she had perceived
something of the heroism that was needed to meet them; yet she had never
before imagined what that life of confinement might be, until she had
watched this man, whom she had known in the world as a curt and almost
masterful gentleman, careful of his dress, particular of the deference
that was due to him, now become this worn prisoner, careless of his
appearance, who stroked his mouth continually, once or twice gnawing his
nails, who paced about in this abominable hole, where a tumbled heap of
straw and blankets represented a bed, and a rickety table with a chair
and a stool his sole furniture. It seemed as if a husk had been stripped
from him, and a shrinking creature had come out of it which at present
she could not recognise.

Then he suddenly wheeled on her, and for the first time some kind of
forcefulness appeared in his manner.

"And my Uncle Bassett?" he cried abruptly. "What is he doing all this
while?"

Marjorie said that Mr. Bassett had been most active on his behalf with
the lawyers, but, for the present, was gone back again