t to be
broached.

"Poor Father Philip is gone," he exclaimed in a sympathetic tone.

"Ye-e-s," slowly assented the baron.

"And you miss him, I perceive," pursued the esquire tremulously.

"Very true, but--"

"And I hear Nicholas Bury is about to depart," hazarded Manners,
interrupting the baron.

"Eh! what?" exclaimed Sir George. "Father Nicholas going?"

"He has informed Everard so."

"No, he must stay," returned the knight, banishing the wrinkles that
had contracted his brow; "of course he must stay."

He was clearly off his guard now, and Manners breathed easier again;
for, thanks to the efforts of Dorothy and Crowleigh, as well as to
his own perceptions, he was by no means ignorant of the conspiracy of
which he was the victim, and he wished to procrastinate the inevitable
interview until a more favourable time presented itself for the
purpose.

"Where did he come from?" continued the baron, drifting innocently
farther and farther away from the purpose of the interview.

"Am I to trust thee with his secret then?" asked the lover.

"Of course, let me know all. I shall protect him, come what will."

"Then he is Sir Ronald Bury's brother."

"He is a better man than his brother, then," exclaimed Sir George,
when he had overcome his astonishment. "Did Sir Everard fetch him from
Nottingham?"

"Nay, from Dale Abbey."

"Ha!" ejaculated the baron, "say you so? The abbey is dismantled, and
methought I knew every Catholic in the shire."

"Then, Sir George, you forgot the hermitage," was the prompt reply.

Sir George had just caught sight of his good lady through the open
lattice window, and as he saw her wending her way quickly along the
path it painfully recalled him to a sense of his position.

"I sent for thee," he said suddenly, changing the conversation and
knitting his brow, "because I wished to see thee on a matter of much
importance."

"I am honoured by your confidence," promptly returned the esquire,
making a gallant effort to escape the subject, "but pray on no
account tell either Everard or Nicholas that it was I who gave the
information. I was charged to tell no man, by my honour."

Unluckily, Lady Vernon passed the door just as he was speaking, and
the sound of her footsteps kept the subject too well in the baron's
mind for him to wander from it again.

"About Dorothy," he explained, ignoring the last remark.

Manners was nonplussed; he attempted no rejoinder, and the baron paced
th