the least. And, Pan, we desire not to be burned; at all gates, I don't,
if you do."

"Take your heart to you, sister; my tongue shall do you none ill. I can
keep mine own counsel, and have ere now done the same."

"Then, if you be so discreet, you can maybe be trusted to make
acquaintance with Christie. But suffer not her nor Roger to win you
from the true Catholic faith."

"I think there is little fear," said Pandora quietly.

The two sisters were nieces of Mr Justice Roberts, and daughters of Mr
Roberts of Primrose Croft, who was owner of the works of which Roger
Hall was manager. Theirs was one of the aristocratic houses of the
neighbourhood, and themselves a younger branch of an old county family
which dated from the days of Henry the First. The head of that house,
Mr Roberts of Glassenbury, would almost have thought it a condescension
to accept a peerage. The room in which the girls sat was handsomely
furnished according to the tastes of the time. A curtain of rich shot
silk--"changeable sarcenet" was the name by which they knew it--screened
off the window end of it at pleasure; a number of exceedingly
stiff-looking chairs, the backs worked in tapestry, were ranged against
the wall opposite the fire; a handsome chair upholstered in blue velvet
stood near the fireplace. Velvet stools were here and there about the
room, and cushions, some covered with velvet, some with crewel-work,
were to be seen in profusion. They nearly covered the velvet settle, at
one side of the fire, and they nestled in soft, plumy, inviting fashion,
into the great Flanders chair on the other side. In one corner was "a
chest of coffins"--be not dismayed, gentle reader! the startling phrase
only meant half-a-dozen boxes, fitting inside each other in graduated
sizes. Of course there was a cupboard, and equally of course the
white-washed walls were hung with tapestry, wherein a green-kirtled
Diana, with a ruff round her neck and a farthingale of sufficient
breadth, drew a long arrow against a stately stag of ten, which, short
of outraging the perspective, she could not possibly hit. A door now
opened in the corner of the room, and admitted a lady of some forty
years, tall and thin, and excessively upright, having apparently been
more starched in her mind and carriage than in her dress. Pandora
turned to her.

"Aunt Grena, will you give me leave to make me acquainted with Master
Hall's little maid--he that manageth the cloth-wo