“I am sorry that Sir Nicholas has been so troubled,” she said to Hubert, as they turned the corner of the house together. “Why cannot we leave one another alone, and each worship God as we think fit?”
Hubert smiled in the darkness to himself.
“I am afraid Queen Mary did not think it could be done, either,” he said. “But then, Mistress Isabel,” he went on, “I am glad that you feel that religion should not divide people.”
“Surely not,” she said, “so long as they love God.”
“Then you think—” began Hubert, and then stopped. Isabel turned to him.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Nothing,” said Hubert.
They had reached the door in the boundary wall by now, and Isabel would not let him come further with her and bade him good-night. But Hubert still stood, with his hand on the door, and watched the white figure fade into the dusk, and listened to the faint rustle of her skirt over the dry leaves; and then, when he heard at last the door of the Dower House open and close, he sighed to himself and went home.
Isabel heard her father call from his room as she passed through the hall; and went in to him as he sat at his table in his furred gown, with his books about him, to bid him good-night and receive his blessing. He lifted his hand for a moment to finish the sentence he was writing, and she stood watching the quill move and pause and move again over the paper, in the candlelight, until he laid the pen down, and rose and stood with his back to the fire, smiling down at her. He was a tall, slender man, surprisingly upright for his age, with a delicate, bearded, scholar’s face; the little plain ruff round his neck helped to emphasise the fine sensitiveness of his features; and the hands which he stretched out to his daughter were thin and veined.
“Well, my daughter,” he said, looking down at her with his kindly grey eyes so like her own, and holding her hands.