Now and again she thought of Robin. She wondered whether he, too, one
day (and not of necessity a far-distant day, since promotion came
quickly in this war of faith), would occupy some post like that which
this man held so gaily and so courageously; and for the first time,
perhaps, she understood not in vision merely, but in sober thought, what
the life of a priest in those days signified. Certainly she had met man
after man before--she had entertained them often enough in her mother's
place, and had provided by her own wits for their security--men who
went in peril of liberty and even of life; but here, within the walls of
London, in this "wolves' den" as Father Campion had called it, where men
brushed against one another continually, and looked into a thousand
faces a day, where patrols went noisily with lights and weapons, where
the great Tower stood, where her Grace, the mistress of the wolves, had
her dwelling--here, peril assumed another aspect, and pain and death
another reality, from that which they presented on the wind-swept hills
and the secret valleys of the country from which they came.... And it
was with Father Campion himself, in his very flesh, that she had talked
this evening--it was Father Campion who had given her that swift, kindly
look of commendation, as Mr. Babington had spoken of her reason for
coming to London, and of her hospitality to wandering priests--Father
Campion, the Angel of the Church, was in England.
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