“Well, but here is supper waiting,” said my lady, “and Isabel, too, whom you have not spoken to yet.”
Sir Nicholas paid no attention.
“Ah! but that was not all,” he went on, savagely striking his boot again, “at the end of all who should I see but that—that—damned rogue—whom God reward!”—and he turned and spat into the fire—“Topcliffe. There he was, bowing to my Lord and the Commissioners. When I think of that man,” he said, “when I think of that man—” and Sir Nicholas’ kindly old passionate face grew pale and lowering with fury, and his eyebrows bent themselves forward, and his lower lip pushed itself out, and his hand closed tremblingly on his whip.
His wife laid down her embroidery and came to him.
“There, sweetheart,” she said, taking his cap and whip. “Now sit down and have supper, and leave that man to God.”
Sir Nicholas grew quiet again; and after a saying a word or two of apology to Isabel, left the room to wash before he sat down to supper.
“Mistress Isabel does not know who Topcliffe is,” said Hubert.
“Hush, my son,” said his mother, “your father does not like his name to be spoken.”
Presently Sir Nicholas returned, and sat down to supper. Gradually his good nature returned, and he told them what he had seen in Chichester, and the talk he had heard. How it was reported to his lordship the Bishop that the old religion was still the religion of the people’s hearts—how, for example, at Lindfield they had all the images and the altar furniture hidden underground, and at Battle, too; and that the mass could be set up again at a few hours’ notice: and that the chalices had not been melted down into communion cups according to the orders issued, and so on. And that at West Grinsted, moreover, the Blessed Sacrament was there still—praise God—yes, and was going to remain there. He spoke freely before Isabel, and yet he remembered his courtesy too, and did not abuse the new-fangled religion, as he thought it, in her presence; or seek in any way to trouble her mind. If ever in an excess of anger he was carried away in his talk, his wife would always check him gently; and he would always respond and apologise to Isabel if he had transgressed good manners. In fact, he was just a fiery old man who could not change his religion even at the bidding of his monarch, and could not understand how what was right twenty years ago was wrong now.
Isabel herself listened with patience and tenderness, and awe too; because she loved and honoured this old man in spite of the darkness in which he still walked. He also told them in lower tones of a rumour that was persistent at Chichester that the Duke of Norfolk had been imprisoned by the Queen’s orders, and was to be charged with treason; and that he was at present at Burnham, in Mr. Wentworth’s house, under the guard of Sir Henry Neville. If this was true, as indeed it turned out to be later, it was another blow to the Catholic cause in England; but Sir Nicholas was of a sanguine mind, and pooh-poohed the whole affair even while he related it.