Mrs. Stoddart hastened to lay a soothing unguent on the sensitive spirit of the celebrated authoress. It quickly transpired that the invitation to Annette had been mainly the result of Mrs. Stoddart's own suggestion. "I begged him to let me have Annette with me for a few days," she said, "and he was most kind about it. He is one of my oldest friends." Aunt Maria, somewhat mollified, yielded a dignified consent, and an incident which had had its painful moment was closed. The next day the news reached the Miss Blinketts with the afternoon delivery of milk that the carriage from Noyes Court had come to Red Riff, and that Annette had departed in it with a small dress-box at her feet, and a hat-box on the vacant seat beside her. Noyes Court is not an old house as old houses go in Lowshire, not like Loudham close by, which has looked into its lake since Edward the Third's time. Noyes was built by Hakoun Le Geyt, to whom Henry the Eighth gave Noyes Priory and the estates belonging thereto. And Hakoun erected a long black and white timbered house, with elaborately carved beams and doorways, on the high ground above the deserted Priory. And possibly he took most of the lead from the Priory roof, and certainly he took some of the carved hammerbeams, for they have the word "Maria" running along them, as you may see to this day. For when Cardinal Wolsey came to visit him, the Priory was already a ruin. Perhaps Hakoun was a man of foresight, and may have realized that the great Cardinal, who was coming to Noyes on the quest of suppressing some of the Lowshire monasteries in order to swell the revenues of his new college at Ipswich, might lay his clutching hand on anything that still remained in the condemned Priory, and so thought it politic to appropriate what he could while opportunity offered. However that may have been, Noyes is rich in ancient lattice and stained glass, and curious lead-work and gargoyle. And in the minstrels' gallery you may see how cunningly the carved angels and griffons have been inserted at intervals in the black oak balustrade.