ands nor call them Father in
the presence of the servants--at least not in my house."

"Ah!" she said, "you were always prudent. Have you seen his secret
doors?" she went on to Anthony. "The entire Catholic Church might play
hare and hounds with the Holy Father as huntsman and the Cardinals as the
whips, through Mr. Buxton's secret labyrinths."

"Wait until you are hare, and it is other than Holy Church that is
a-hunting," said Mr. Buxton, "and you will thank God for my labyrinths,
as you call them."

Then she greeted Isabel with great warmth.

"Why, my dear," she said, "you are not the little Puritan maiden any
longer. We must have a long talk to-night; and you shall tell me
everything."

"Mistress Mary is not so greatly changed," said Isabel, smiling. "She
always would be told everything."

It was strange to Anthony to meet Mary again after so long, and to find
her so little changed, as Isabel had said truly. He himself had passed
through so much since they had last met at Greenwich over six years
ago--his conversion, his foreign sojourn, and, above all, the bewildering
and intoxicating sweetness of his ordination and priestly life. And yet
he felt as close to Mary as ever, knit in a bond of wonderful good
fellowship and brotherhood such as he had never felt to any other in just
that kind and degree. He watched her, warm and content, as she talked
across the polished oak and beneath the gleam of the candles; and
listened, charmed by her air and her talk.

"There is not so much news of her Grace," she said, "save that she is
turning soldier in her old age. She rode out to Tilbury, you know, the
other day, in steel cuirass and scarlet; out to see her dear Robin and
the army; and her royal face was all smiles and becks, and lord! how the
soldiers cheered! But if you had seen her as I did, in her room when she
first buckled on her armour, and the joints did not fit--yes, and heard
her! there were no smiles to spare then. She lodged at Mr. Rich's, you
know, two nights; but he would be Mr. Poor, I should suppose, by the time
her Grace left him; for he will not see the worth of a shoelace again of
all that he expended on her."

"You see," remarked Mr. Buxton to Isabel, "how fortunate we are in having
such a friend of her Grace's with us. We hear all the cream of the news,
even though it be a trifle sour sometimes."

"A lover of her Grace," said Mary, "loves the truth about her, however
bitter. But then I have no s