"When you and I fence together at table, she does not turn frigid like so many holy folk--or peevish and bewildered like stupid folk--but she just looks at us, and laughs far down in those deep grey eyes of hers. Oh! I love her!" ended Mary. They walked in silence a minute or two. "And I think I do," said Mr. Buxton softly. "Eh?" exclaimed Mary, "you do what?" She had quite forgotten her last sentence. "It is no matter," he said yet more softly; and would say no more. Presently the talk fell on the Maxwells; and came round to Hubert. "They say he would be a favourite at Court," said Mary, "had he not a wife. But her Grace likes not married men. She looked kindly upon him at Deptford, I know; and I have seen him at Greenwich. You know, of course, about Isabel?" Mr. Buxton shook his head. "Why, it was common talk that they would have been man and wife years ago, had not the fool apostatised." Her companion questioned her further, and soon had the whole story out of her. "But I am thankful," ended Mary, "that it has so ended." The next day she went back to Court; and it was with real grief that the three watched her wonderful plumed riding-hat trot along behind the top of the churchyard wall, with her woman beside her, and her little liveried troop of men following at a distance. The days passed by, bringing strange tidings to Stanfield. News continued to reach the Catholics of the good confessions witnessed here and there in England by priests and laity. At the end of July, three priests, Garlick, Ludlam and Sympson, had been executed at Derby, and at the end of August the defeat of the Armada seemed to encourage Elizabeth yet further, and Mr. Leigh, a priest, with four laymen and Mistress Margaret Ward, died for their religion at Tyburn. By the end of September the news of the hopeless defeat and disappearance of the Armada had by now been certified over and over again. Terrible stories had come in during August of that northward flight of all that was left of the fleet over the plunging North Sea up into the stormy coast of Scotland; then rumours began of the miseries that were falling on the Spaniards off Ireland--Catholic Ireland from which they had hoped so much. There was scarcely a bay or a cape along the west coast where some ship had not put in, with piteous entreaties for water and aid--and scarcely a bay or a cape that was not blood-guilty. Along the straight coast from Sligo Bay westwards, down the west coast, Clew Bay, Connemara, and haunted Dingle itself, where the Catholic religion under arms had been so grievously chastened eight years ago--everywhere half-drowned or half-starved Spaniards, piteously entreating, were stripped and put to the sword either by the Irish savages or the English gentlemen. The church-bells were rung in Stanfield and in every English village, and the flame of national pride and loyalty burned fiercer and higher than ever. * * * *