Her father said nothing, but still looked steadily down into her eyes for a moment, and then turned and looked away from her into the fire.
“You must take care,” he said gently. “Remember he is a Papist, born and bred; and that he has a heart to be broken too.”
She felt herself steadily flushing; and as he turned again towards her, dropped her eyes.
“You will be prudent and tender, I know,” he added. “I trust you wholly, Isabel.”
Then he kissed her on the forehead and laid his hand on her head, and looked up, as the Puritan manner was.
“May the God of grace bless you, my daughter; and make you faithful to the end.” And then he looked into her eyes again, smiled and nodded; and she went out, leaving him standing there.
Mr. Norris had begun to fear that the boy loved Isabel, but as yet he did not know whether Isabel understood it or even was aware of it. The marriage difficulties of Catholics and Protestants were scarcely yet existing; and certainly there was no formulated rule of dealing with them. Changes of religion were so frequent in those days that difficulties, when they did arise, easily adjusted themselves. It was considered, for example, by politicians quite possible at one time that the Duke of Anjou should conform to the Church of England for the sake of marrying the Queen: or that he should attend public services with her, and at the same time have mass and the sacraments in his own private chapel. Or again, it was open to question whether England as a whole would not return to the old religion, and Catholicism be the only tolerated faith.
But to really religious minds such solutions would not do. It would have been an intolerable thought to this sincere Puritan, with all his tolerance, that his daughter should marry a Catholic; such an arrangement would mean either that she was indifferent to vital religion, or that she was married to a man whose creed she was bound to abhor and anathematise: and however willing Mr. Norris might be to meet Papists on terms of social friendliness, and however much he might respect their personal characters, yet the thought that the life of any one dear to him should be irretrievably bound up with all that the Catholic creed involved, was simply an impossible one.
Besides all this he had no great opinion of Hubert. He thought he detected in him a carelessness and want of principle that would make him hesitate to trust his daughter to him, even if the insuperable barrier of religion were surmounted. Mr. Norris liked a man to be consistent and zealous for his creed, even if that creed were dark and superstitious—and this zeal seemed to him lamentably lacking in Hubert. More than once he had heard the boy speak of his father with an air of easy indulgence, that his own opinion interpreted as contempt.
“I believe my father thinks,” he had once said, “that every penny he pays in fines goes to swell the accidental glory of God.”