And yet, being both shy and somewhat cold of temperament, he restrained himself, and greeted her only as a friend; for his mother’s influence was holding him back, urging him not to marry a Papist, were she ever so lovely or lovable.
He had known Angela for nearly three months, and his acquaintance with her had reached this point of intimacy, yet Lady Warner had never seen her. This fact distressed him, and he had tried hard to awaken his mother’s interest by praises of the Fareham family and of Angela’s exquisite character; but the Scarlet Spectre came between the Puritan lady and the house of Fareham.
“There is nothing you can tell me about this girl, upon whom I fear you have foolishly set your affection, which can make me forget that she has been nursed and swaddled in the bondage of a corrupt Church, taught to worship idols, and to cherish lying traditions, while the light of God’s holy word has been made dark for her.”
“She is young enough to embrace a purer creed, and to walk by the clearer light that leads your footsteps, mother. If she were my wife I should not despair of winning her to think as we do.”
“And in all the length of England was there no young woman of right principles fit to be thy wife, that thou must needs fall into the snare of the first Popish witch who set her lure for thee?”
“Popish witch! Oh, mother, how ill you can conceive the image of my dear love, who has no witchcraft but beauty, no charm so potent as her truth and innocency!”
“I know them—these children of the Scarlet Woman—and I know their works, and the fate of those who trust them. The late King—weak and stubborn as he was—might have been alive this day, and reigning over a contented people, but for that fair witch who ruled him. It was the Frenchwoman’s sorceries that wrought Charles’s ruin.”
“If thou wouldst but see my Angela,” pleaded the son, with a caressing arm about his mother’s spare shoulders.
“Thine! What! is she thine—pledged and promised already? Then, indeed, these white hairs will go down with sorrow to the grave.”
“Mother, I doubt if thou couldst find so much as a single grey hair in that comely head of thine,” said the son; and the mother smiled in the midst of her affliction.