“Oh! are you sure?” asked Mistress Margaret, her eyes shining. “Thank God, if it be so!”
“Sure?” said Hubert, “why she will not marry me; at least not yet.”
“Oh, poor lad,” she said tenderly, “to have lost both God and Isabel.”
Hubert turned on her savagely. But the old nun’s eyes were steady and serene.
“Poor lad!” she said again.
Hubert looked down again; his lip wrinkled up in a little sneer.
“As far as I am concerned,” he said, “I can understand your not caring, but I am astonished at this response of yours to her father’s confidence!”
Lady Maxwell grew white to the lips.
“I have told you,” she began—“but you do not seem to believe it—that I have had nothing to do, so far as I know, with her conversion, which”—and she raised her voice bravely—“I pray God to accomplish. She has, of course, asked me questions now and then; and I have answered them—that is all.”
“And I,” said Mistress Margaret, “plead guilty to the same charge, and to no other. You are not yourself, dear boy, at present; and indeed I do not wonder at it; and I pray God to help you; but you are not yourself, or you would not speak like this to your mother.”