"Well; let us take your neighbours at Padley. They will be in trouble if
they do not look to their goings. Mr. FitzHerbert--"
But again she interrupted him. She was determined to know how much he
knew. She had thought that she had been discreet enough, and that no
news had leaked out of her own entertaining of priests; it was chiefly
that discretion might be preserved that she had set her hands to the
work at all. With Padley so near it was thought that less suspicion
would be aroused. Her name had never yet come before the authorities, so
far as she knew.
"But what has all this to do with me, sir?" she asked sharply. "It is
true that I do not go to church, and that I pay my fines when they are
demanded: Are there new laws, then, against the old faith?"
She spoke with something of real bitterness. It was genuine enough; her
only art lay in her not concealing it; for she was determined to press
her question home. And, in his shrewd, compelling face, she read her
answer even before his words gave it.
"Well, mistress; it was not of you that I meant to speak--so much as of
your friends. They are your friends, not mine. And as your friends, I
thought it to be a kindly action to send them an advertisement. If they
are not careful, there will be trouble."
"At Padley?"
"At Padley, or elsewhere. It is the persons that fall under the law, not
places!"
"But, sir, you are a magistrate; and--"
He sprang up, his face aflame with real wrath.
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