"Richard! So far is it?"
She did not answer; and Joris rose, and looked at the girl's mother inquiringly. Her face expressed assent; and he said reluctantly, "Well, then, I will as easy make it as I can. Once more, and for one hour, thou may see him. But I lay it on thee to tell him the truth, for this and for all other time."
"Now may I go? He is a-nigh. His boat I hear at the landing;" and she stood up, intent, listening, with her fair head lifted, and her wet eyes fixed on the distance.
"Well, be it so. Go."
With the words she slipped from the room; and Joris called Baltus to bring him some hot coals, and began to fill his pipe. As he did so, he watched Lysbet with some anxiety. She had offered him no sympathy, she evinced no disposition to continue the conversation; and, though she kept her face from him, he understood that all her movements expressed a rebellious temper. In and out of the room she passed, very busy about her own affairs, and apparently indifferent to his anxiety and sorrow.
At first Joris felt some natural anger at her attitude; but, as the Virginia calmed and soothed him, he remembered that he had told her nothing of his interview with Hyde, and that she might be feeling and reasoning from a different standpoint from himself. Then the sweetness of his nature was at once in the ascendant, and he said, "Lysbet, come then, and talk with me about the child."
She turned the keys in her press slowly, and stood by it with them in her hand. "What has been told thee, Joris, to-day? And who has spoken? Tongues evil and envious, I am sure of that."
"Thou art wrong. The young man to me spoke himself. He said, 'I love your daughter. I want to marry her.'"
"Well, then, he did no wrong. And as for Katrijntje, it is in nature that a young girl should want a lover. It is in nature she should choose the one she likes best. That is what I say."
"That is what I say, Lysbet. It is in nature, also, that we want too much food and wine, too much sleep, too much pleasure, too little work. It is in nature that our own way we want. It is in nature that the good we hate, and the sin we love. My Lysbet, to us God gives his own good grace, that the things that are in nature we might put below the reason and the will."