"But it may serve to keep out a country constable. And, indeed,
it is the best I can contrive in this house."
CHAPTER VII
I
Marjorie found it curious, even to herself, how the press that faced the
foot of the two beds where she and Alice slept side by side, became
associated in her mind with the thought of Robin; and she began to
perceive that it was largely with the thought of him in her intention
that the idea had first presented itself of having the cell constructed
at all. It was not that in her deliberate mind she conceived that he
would be hunted, that he would fly here, that she would save him; but
rather in that strange realm of consciousness which is called sometimes
the Imagination, and sometimes by other names--that inner shadow-show on
which move figures cast by the two worlds--she perceived him in this
place....
It was in the following winter that she was reminded of him by other
means than those of his letters.
* * * * *
The summer and autumn had passed tranquilly enough, so far as this
outlying corner of England was concerned. News filtered through of the
stirring world outside, and especially was there conveyed to her,
through Alice for the most part, news that concerned the fortunes of
Catholics. Politics, except in this connection, meant little enough to
such as her. She heard, indeed, from time to time vague rumours of
fighting, and of foreign Powers; and thought now and again of Spain, as
of a country that might yet be, in God's hand, an instrument for the
restoring of God's cause in England; she had heard, too, in this year,
of one more rumour of the Queen's marriage with the Duke d'Alencon, and
then of its final rupture.
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