Kirke came quickly round. She was tall and slender and
middle-aged, with a somewhat anxious face; but a look of great relief
came over it as she saw Anthony.
"Thank God you are come," she said; "I feared something had happened."
Anthony explained the circumstances in a few words.
"I will ride on gladly, madam, if you think right; but I will ask you in
any case to take my sister in."
"Why, how can you say that?" she said; "I am a Catholic. Come in, father.
But I fear there is but poor accommodation for the servants."
"And the horses?" asked Anthony.
"The barn at the back is got ready for them," she said; "perhaps it would
be well to take them there at once." She called a woman, and sent her to
show the men where to stable the horses, while Anthony and Isabel and the
maid dismounted and came in with her to the house.
There, they talked over the situation and what was best to be done. Her
husband had ridden over to Wrotham, and she expected him back for supper;
nothing then could be finally settled till he came. In the meantime the
Manor Lodge was probably the safest place in all the woods, Mrs. Kirke
declared; the nearest house was half a mile away, and that was the
Rectory; and the Rector himself was a personal friend and favourable to
Catholics. The Manor Lodge, too, stood well off the road to Wrotham, and
not five strangers appeared there in the year. Fifty men might hunt the
woods for a month and not find it; in fact, Mr. Kirke had taken the house
on account of its privacy, for he was weary, his wife said, of paying her
fines for recusancy; and still more unwilling to pay his own, when that
happy necessity should arrive; for he had now practically made up his
mind to be a Catholic, and only needed a little instruction before being
received.
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