They had taken him to Elizabeth after supper, his good host and hostess. There was something piteously sweet in the tall slim girl in her black dress—the dear young mouth trembling, the blue eyes full of a mist of unshed tears, the hair ripest wheat or brownest barley.
She had taken his hand—hers was like cool white ivory—and listened to him as a sister might.
He had sat beside her, and told her of her father's glorious death. His dark and always rather melancholy face had been lit with sympathy and tenderness. Quite unconscious of his own grace and grave young dignity, he had dwelt upon the Martyr's joy at setting out upon his last journey, with an incomparable delicacy and perfection of phrase.
His voice, though he knew it not, was full of music. His extreme good looks, the refinement and purity of his face, came to the poor child with a wonderful message of consolation.
When he told her how a brutal yeoman had thrown a faggot at the Archdeacon, she shuddered and moaned a little.
Mr. Cressemer and his sister looked at Johnnie with reproach.
But he had done it of set purpose. "And then, Mistress Elizabeth," he continued, "the Doctor said, 'Friend, I have harm enough. What needeth that?'"
His hand had been upon his knee. She caught it up between her own—innocent, as to a brother, unutterably sweet.
"Oh, dear Father!" she cried. "It is just what he would have said. It is so like him!"
"It is liker Christ our Lord," Robert Cressemer broke in, his deep voice shaking with sorrow. "For what, indeed, said He at His cruel nailing? '[Greek: Pater, aphes autois ou gar oidasi ti poiusi.]'"