Sir Henry, however, had come to do his duty, and he did it in spite of appearances. Lord Salisbury had furnished him with minute instructions, which pointed decidedly to probable need of caution in this respect. He was to search for a suspected vault at the east end of the dining-room; for a similar erection beneath the cellars; for ingenious closets squeezed in between the walls of upper rooms; for possible holes in corners and chimneys, wainscots which could be pierced by gimlets, double lofts, and concealed chambers in the rafters. Sir Henry set to work. "Madam," said he to Mrs Abington, "were it not more to the conveniency of yourself and these gentlewomen your friends, that you should take occasion to pay some visit forth of the house? I fear the noise made by my men, not to speak of the turning about of your chambers by taking up of boards and trying of wainscots, shall greatly incommode you if you tarry." Sir Henry wanted sadly to get the ladies away. But Mrs Abington was quite as sagacious as himself, and more determined. She assured him that the noise was nothing, and the little novelties of holes in her dining-room floor and broken wainscots in her drawing-room would be rather amusing than otherwise. Poor Sir Henry, baffled by this clever woman, laments to Lord Salisbury,--"I did never hear so impudent liars as I find here--all recusants, and all resolved to confess nothing, what danger soever they incur.--I could by no means persuade the gentlewoman of the house to depart the house, without I should have carried her, which I held uncivil, as being so nobly born; as I have and do undergo the greater difficulties thereby." The Monday night brought home the master of the house. He answered the queries of the gentlemen in possession with as much apparent frankness as his wife, but assured Sir Henry that the persons for whom he was searching were absolute strangers to him; he had never seen any of them save Gerard, and him only some five and twenty years before. For suspecting him of harbouring priests, not to speak of traitors, there was not a shadow of reason!