"It matters not—he is away. He has left me these six months alone at Luxmore."
"Have you offended him?" asked Ursula, who had cast kindly looks on the thin face, which perhaps reminded her of another—now for ever banished from our sight, and his also.
"He hates me because I am a Catholic, and wish to become a monk."
The youth crossed himself, then started and looked round, in terror of observers. "You will not betray me? You are a good man, Mr. Halifax, and you spoke warmly for us. Tell me—I will keep your secret—are you a Catholic too?"
"No, indeed."
"Ah! I hoped you were. But you are sure you will not betray me?"
Mr. Halifax smiled at such a possibility. Yet, in truth, there was some reason for the young man's fears; since, even in those days, Catholics were hunted down both by law and by public opinion, as virulently as Protestant nonconformists. All who kept out of the pale of the national church were denounced as schismatics, deists, atheists—it was all one.
"But why do you wish to leave the world?"
"I am sick of it. There never was but one in it I cared for, or who cared for me—and now—Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis."
His lips moved in a paroxysm of prayer—helpless, parrot-learnt, Latin prayer; yet, being in earnest, it seemed to do him good. The mother, as if she heard in fancy that pitiful cry, which rose to my memory too—"Poor William!—don't tell William!"—turned and spoke to him kindly, asking him if he would go home with us.