CHAPTER II
SOME NEW LESSONS
The six years that followed Sir Nicholas' return and Hubert's departure
for the North had passed uneventfully at Great Keynes. The old knight had
been profoundly shocked that any Catholic, especially an agent so
valuable as Mr. Stewart, should have found his house a death-trap; and
although he continued receiving his friends and succouring them, he did
so with more real caution and less ostentation of it. His religious zeal
and discretion were further increased by the secret return to the "Old
Religion" of several of his villagers during the period; and a very fair
congregation attended Mass so often as it was said in the cloister wing
of the Hall. The new rector, like his predecessor, was content to let the
squire alone; and unlike him had no wife to make trouble.
Then, suddenly, in the summer of '77, catastrophes began, headed by the
unexpected return of Hubert, impatient of waiting, and with new plans in
his mind.
Isabel had been out with Mistress Margaret walking in the dusk one August
evening after supper, on the raised terrace beneath the yews. They had
been listening to the loud snoring of the young owls in the ivy on the
chimney-stack opposite, and had watched the fierce bird slide silently
out of the gloom, white against the blackness, and disappear down among
the meadows. Once Isabel had seen him pause, too, on one of his return
journeys, suspicious of the dim figures beneath, silhouetted on a branch
against the luminous green western sky, with the outline of a mouse with
its hanging tail plain in his crooked claws, before he glided to his nest
again.
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