litary hunting-lodge, named White Webbs, which
belonged to Dr Hewick, and was let in the shooting season to sportsmen.
This house had been taken by "Mr Meaze" (who was Garnet) as a very
quiet locality, where mass might be said without being overheard by
Protestant ears, and no inconvenient neighbours were likely to gossip
about the inmates. In London, Garnet was a horse-dealer; at White Webbs
he was a gentleman farmer and a sportsman. Here he established himself
and somebody eke, who has not yet appeared on the scene, and whom it is
time to introduce. And I introduce her with no feeling save one of
intense pity, as one more sinned against than sinning--a frail,
passion-swayed, impulsive woman, one of the thousands of women whose
lives Rome has blighted by making that sin which was no sin, and so in
many instances leading up to that which was sin--poor, loving, unhappy
Anne Vaux.

The Hon. Anne Vaux was a younger daughter of William Lord Vaux of
Harrowden, and Elizabeth Beaumont, his first wife. Like many another,
she "loved one only, and she clave to him," whose happy and honourable
wife she might have been, had he been a Protestant clergyman instead of
a Jesuit priest. That Anne Vaux's passionate love for Garnet was for
the man and not the priest, her own letters are sufficient witness, and
Garnet returned the love. She took a solemn vow of obedience to the
Superior of the Jesuit Mission in England, in order that she might be
with him where he was, might follow his steps like a faithful dog, that
his people should be her people, and his God her God. But where he died
she could not die. To "live without the vanished light" was her sadder
destiny.

At White Webbs, she passed as Mrs Perkins or Parkyns, a widow lady, and
the sister of Mr Mease. She received numerous visitors, beside Mr
Mease himself,--Catesby, who does not appear to have assumed any alias,
Mr and Mrs Brooksby (the latter of whom was Anne's sister Eleanor),
Tresham, the Winters, and two dubious individuals, who passed under the
names of Robert Skinner and Mr Perkins. The former was accompanied by
his wife, real or professed; the latter professed to be a brother-in-law
of "Mrs Perkins," and is described as "of middle stature, long visage,
and somewhat lean, of a brown hair, and his beard inclining to
yellow,"--a description which suits none of the conspirators whose
personal appearance is known.

At White Webbs, accordingly, Thomas Winter alight