The seminary founded at Douay by a certain Dr Allen, a fine scholar, who was educated at Oxford, was much resorted to by persecuted Catholics who sought a refuge there. Or by men like Ambrose Gifford, who, obliged to leave the country under the shadow of a crime committed, were glad to throw themselves into the arms ready to receive them, and, as they would have expressed it, find pardon and peace by fasting and penance in the bosom of the Catholic Church. Doubtless, the great majority of those who gathered at Douay at this time were devout and persecuted members of the Church, from the bondage of which Elizabeth had delivered her country, with the hearty approbation of her loyal subjects. But, black sheep like Ambrose Gifford went thither to be washed and outwardly reformed; and he, being a man of considerable ability and shrewdness, had after a time of probation been despatched to England to beat up recruits and to bring back word how the Catholic cause was prospering there. He had, therefore, every reason to wish to take with him his own boy, whose fine physique and noble air he had noted with pride as he had, unseen, watched him for the last few weeks when haunting the neighbourhood like an evil spirit. He would do him credit, and reward all the pains taken to educate him and bring him up as a good Catholic. The motives which prompted him to this were mixed, and revenge against his wife was perhaps the dominant feeling. She loved that boy better than anything on earth; she would bring him up in the faith of the Reformed Church, and teach him, probably, to hate his father. He would, at any rate, get possession of this her idol, and punish her for the words she had spoken to him by the porch of the farm, on that summer evening now more than two weeks ago. Ambrose Gifford had deceived Mary from the first, professing to be a Protestant while it served his purpose to win favour in the household of the Earl of Leicester, but in reality he was a Catholic, and only waited the turn of the tide to declare himself. He led a bad, immoral life, and it was scarcely more than two years after her marriage that Mary Gifford's eyes were opened to the true character of the man who had won her in her inexperienced girlhood by his handsome person--in which the boy resembled him--his suave manner, and his passionate protestations of devotion to her. Many women have had a like bitter lesson to learn, but perhaps few have felt as Mary did, humbled in the very dust, when she awoke to the reality of her position, that the love offered her had been unworthy the name, and that she had been betrayed and deceived by a man who, as soon as the first glamour of his passion was over, showed himself in his true colours, and expected her to take his conduct as a matter of course, leaving her free, as he basely insinuated, to console herself as she liked with other admirers.