The monastery; The abbot.

THE ABBOT. 305
"Heaven forbid, Mistress Lilias," answered the sententious major-domo
"but yet there are worse folkthan the Papists."
"I wonder where they' are to be found," said the waiting-woman, with
some asperity; "but I believe, Master Wingate, if one were to speak to
you about the devil himself, you would say there were worse people than
Satan."
"Assuredly I might say so," replied the steward,'" supposing that I saw
Satan standing at my elbow."
The waiting-woman started, and having exclaimed, "God bless us!'
added, "I wonder, Master Wingate, you can take pleasure in frightening
one thus."
"Nay, Mistress Lilias, I had no such purpose," was the reply; " but
look you here —the Papists are but put down for the present, but who
knows how long this word present will last? There are two great Popish
earls in the north of England, that abominate the very word reformation;
I mean the Northumberland and Westmoreland Earls, men of power
enough to shake any throne in Christendom. Then, though our Scottish
king be, God bless him, a true Protestant, yet he is but a boy; and here is
his mother that was our queen-I trust there is no harm to say, God bless
her too-and she is a Catholic; and many begin to think she has had but
hard measure, such as the Hamiltons in the west, and some of our Border
clans here, and the Gordons in the north, who are all wishing to see a new
world; and if such a new world should chance to come up, it is like that
the Queen will take back her own crown, and that the mass and the cross
will come up, and then down go pulpits, Geneva-gowns, and black silk
skull-caps."
"And have you, Master Jasper Wingate, who have heard the word, and
listened unto pure and precious Mr. Henry Warden, have you, I say, the
patience to speak, or but to think, of popery coming down on us like a
storm, or of the woman Mary again making the royal seat of Scotland a
throne of abomination? No marvel that you are so civil to the cowled
monk, Father Ambrose, when he comes hither with his downcast eyes that
he never raises to my Lady's face, and with his low sweet-toned voice, and
his benedicites, and his benisons; and who so ready to take them kindly as
Master Wingate?"
" Mistress Lilias," replied the butler, with an air which was intended to
close the debate, "there are reasons for all things. If I received Father
Ambrose debonairly, and suffered him to steal a word now and then with
this same Roland Grseme, it was not that I cared a brass bodle for his
benison or malison either, but only because I respected my master's blood.
And who can answer, if Mary come in again, whether he may not be as
stout a tree to lean to as ever his brother hath proved to us? For down
goes the Earl of Murray when the Queen comes by her own again; and
good is his luck if he can keep the head on his own shoulders. And down
goes our Knight, with the Earl, his patron; and who so like to mount into
his empty saddle as this same Father Ambrose? The Pope of Rome can
so soon dispense with his vows, and then we should have Sir Edward the
soldier, instead of Ambrose the priest."
Anger and astonishment kept Mrs. Lilias silent, while her old friend, in
his self-complacent manner, was making known to her his political speculations. At length her resentment found utterance in words of great ire
and scorn. " What, Master Wingate! have you eaten my mistress's bread,'
to say nothing of my master's, so many years, that you could live to think
of her being dispossessed of her own Castle of Avenel, by a wretched
monk, who is not a drop's blood to her in the way of relation? I, that am
but a woman, would try first whether my rock or his cowl was the better
metal. Shame on you, Master Wingate! If I had not held you as so old
an acquaintance, this should have gone to my Lady's ears tb Pugh I had
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