“At Douai: and—Isabel—I think I must go this summer.”
“This summer!” she said. “Why——” and she was silent.
“Anthony,” she went on, “I would like to tell you about Hubert.”
And then the story of the past months came out; she turned away her face as she talked; and at last she told him how Hubert had come for his answer, a week before his time.
“It was on Monday,” she said. “I heard him on the stairs, and stood up as he came in; and he stopped at the door in silence, and I could not bear to look at him. I could hear him breathing quickly; and then I could not bear to—think of it all; and I dropped down into my chair again, and hid my face in my arm and burst into crying. And still he said nothing, but I felt him come close up to me and kneel down by me; and he put his hand over mine, and held them tight; and then he whispered in a kind of quick way:
“‘I will be what you please; Catholic or Protestant, or what you will’; and I lifted my head and looked at him, because it was dreadful to hear him—Hubert—say that: and he was whiter than I had ever seen him; and then—then he began to wrinkle his mouth—you know the way he does when his horse is pulling or kicking: and then he began to say all kinds of things: and oh! I was so sorry; because he had behaved so well till then.”
“What did he say?” asked Anthony quickly.
“Ah! I have tried to forget,” said Isabel. “I do not want to think of him as he was when he was angry and disappointed. At last he flung out of the room and down the stairs, and I have not seen him since. But Lady Maxwell sent for me the same evening an hour later; and told me that she could not live there any longer. She said that Hubert had ridden off to London; and would not be down again till Whitsuntide; but that she must be gone before then. So I am afraid that he said things he ought not; but of course she did not tell me one word. And she asked me to go with her. And, and—Anthony, I did not know what to say; because I did not know what you would do when you heard that I was a Catholic; I was waiting to tell you when you came home—but now—but now——Oh, Anthony, my darling!”
At last the two came indoors. Mistress Margaret met them in the hall. She looked for a moment at the two; at Anthony in his satin and lace and his smiling face over his ruff and his steady brown eyes; and Isabel on his arm, with her clear pale face and bosom and black high-piled hair, and her velvet and lace, and a rope of pearls.
“Why,” said the old nun, smiling, “you look a pair of lovers.”