"Too great a risk to run," said the Countess, gravely. "If any inquiration be made for you, and you not found here, the officers of justice should go straight thither. No: I will visit my Lady Lettice myself, and soften the thing as best I may to her and to Mrs Louvaine. The only thing," she paused a moment in thought. "What other friends have you in London?" "Truly, none, Madam, save my cousin David--" "Not a relative. Is there no clergyman that knows you, who is of good account, and a staunch Protestant?" "There is truly Mr Marshall, a friend of my grandmother, and an ejected Puritan." "Where dwelleth he?" "In Shoe Lane, Madam." "Is he a wise and discreet man?" "I think, Madam, my grandmother holds him for such." "It is possible," said Lady Oxford, meditatively, "that you might be safe in his house for a day or two, and your friends from the White Bear could go as if to see him and his wife--hath he a wife?" "He buried his wife this last summer, Madam: he hath a daughter that keeps his house, of about mine own years." "If you think it worth to run the risk, you might ask this good gentleman to give you a day's shelter, so as to speak with your friends ere you depart. It were a risk: yet not, perchance, too great. You must judge for yourself. If you choose this way, I will take it on myself to let your friends know how it is with you." It was a bitter pill to swallow. Mr Marshall was about the last man in his world to whom Aubrey felt any inclination to lay himself under an obligation. Both as a clergyman, a Puritan, and an ejected minister, this undiscerning youth had looked down exceedingly upon his superior. The popular estimate of the clergy was just then at the lowest ebb, and it required some moral courage for any man to take holy orders, who was neither very high up in rank, nor very low down. This was the result partly of the evil lives, and partly of the gross ignorance, of the pre-Reformation priests; the lives were now greatly amended, but too much of the ignorance, remained, and the time had not been sufficient to remove the stigma. A clergyman was expected to apprentice his children to a trade, or at best to place them in domestic service; and he would have been thought forward and impertinent if, when dining with laymen in a good position, he had not spontaneously taken his departure before dessert made its appearance. To be indebted, therefore, for an essential service to one of this lowly class, Aubrey was sufficiently foolish to account a small degradation.