e went at last into Robin's
cell and saw him standing there, and found it to be that in which so
long ago she had talked with Mr. Thomas FitzHerbert....

The great realities were closing round her, as irresistible as wheels
and bars. There was scarcely a period in her life, scarcely a voluntary
action of hers for good or evil, that did not furnish some part of this
vast machine in whose grip both she and her friend were held so fast. No
calculation on her part could have contrived so complete a climax; yet
hardly a calculation that had not gone astray from that end to which she
had designed it. It was as if some monstrous and ironical power had been
beneath and about her all her life long, using those thoughts and
actions that she had intended in one way to the development of another.

First, it was she that had first turned her friend's mind to the life of
a priest. Had she submitted to natural causes, she would have been his
wife nine years ago; they would have been harassed no doubt and
troubled, but no more. It was she again that had encouraged his return
to Derbyshire. If it had not been for that, and for the efforts she had
made to do what she thought good work for God, he might have been sent
elsewhere. It was in her house that he had been taken, and in the very
place she had designed for his safety. If she had but sent him on, as he
wished, back to the hills again, he might never have been taken at all.
These, and a score of other thoughts, had raced continually through her
mind; she felt even as if she were responsible for the manner of his
taking, and for the horror that it had been his father who had
accomplished it; if she had said more, or less, in the hall of that dark
morning; if she had not swooned; if she had said bravely: "It is your
son, sir, who is here," all might have been saved. And now it was
Topcliffe who was come--(and she knew all that this signified)--the very
man at whose mere bodily presence she had sickened in the court of the
Tower. And, last, it was she who had to tell Robin of this.

So tremendous, however, had been the weight of these thoughts upon her,
crowned and clinched (so to say) by finding that the priest was even in
the same cell as that in which she had visited the traitor, that there
was no room any more for bitterness. Even as she waited, with Mr.
Biddell behind her, as the gaoler fumbled with the keys, she was aware
that the last breath of resentment had been drawn.... It