"In spite of you."
"I vow it shall be partly because of me."
"You're very fond of vowing."
Then, at last, I knew where I stood. I knew that Robert had said something.
Into the midst of this crisis dropped Miss Rivers. No doubt she had seen the expression on our faces, and intervened in pure good-heartedness to snatch me as a brand from the burning; for she threw herself into talk about the church, crying out against the hideous havoc we Protestants had wrought with whitewash and crude woodwork.
"I'm not Catholic, not a bit Catholic, though I may be a little high church; but I couldn't have spoiled everything just for the sake of getting a place to worship in, cheap, without having to put up a new building. Why, it's like murder!"
Then my lady flashed out at her unexpectedly, and saved me an answer.
"Where's your imagination, Phil? It must have gone wool-gathering, or you could put yourself into the place of these people and see why they tore away the pictures and statues, and hid every bit of color with whitewash. I love beauty, but I would have done as they did. Color in churches was to them the life-blood of their nearest and dearest, splashed upon the walls. Those statues, those pictured saints they pulled down or covered up, had smiled on persecution. They had to have a kind of frenzied house-cleaning to get out the smell of incense. Oh, I know how they felt when they did it, as if I'd been here myself with a broom full of whitewash."
"Perhaps some ancestress of yours was here, and did some sweeping," said I. But it was a mistake for me to speak. She froze in an instant, and suggested that if everybody had seen enough, we should go out and give "poor Mr. Starr a chance."
"I'll stop and show him the Haarlem window," said she. And I hated Starr. Perhaps that was the state of mind she wished to create; at all events her eyes retained the exaltation of the whitewashing. Nor should I wonder if those two enjoyed the thought that I was kept waiting outside, as much as they enjoyed roaming together in "glass country."