She had conversed with those who remembered
the League; she had seen the nuns weeping for Edward Campion's cruel fate;
she had heard Masses sung for the soul of murdered Mary Stuart. She
had heard of Raleigh's visions of conquest and of gold, setting his
prison-blanched face towards the West, in the afternoon of life, to
encounter bereavement, treachery, sickening failure, and go back to his
native England to expiate the dreams of genius with the blood of a martyr.
And through all the changes and chances of that eventful century she had
lived apart, full of pity and wonder, in a charmed circle of piety and
love.
Her room, in these peaceful stages of the closing scene, was a haven of
rest. Angela loved the seclusion of the panelled chamber, with its heavily
mullioned casement facing the south-west, and the polished oak floor,
on which the red and gold of the sunset were mirrored, as on the dark
stillness of a moorland tarn. For her every object in the room had its
interest or its charm. The associations of childhood hallowed them all. The
large ivory crucifix, yellow with age, dim with the kisses of adoring lips;
the delf statuettes of Mary and Joseph, flaming with gaudy colour; the
figure of the Saviour and St.
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