but as thou shalt hear, a most wicked and artful man."

Belasez at once set down the unknown squire as a model of all the
cardinal virtues.

"Thou art well aware, Belasez, my child, that these idolaters practise
the Black Art, and are versed in spells which they can cast over all
unfortunate persons who are so luckless as to come within their
influence."

There had been a time when Belasez believed this, and many more charges
brought against the Christians, just as they in their turn believed
similar calumnies against the Jews. But the months spent at Bury
Castle, unconsciously to herself till it was done, had shaken and
uprooted many prejudices, leaving her with the simple conviction that
Jews and Christians were all fallible human beings, very much of the
same stamp, some better than others, but good and bad to be found in
both camps. Licorice, however, was by no means the person to whom she
chose to impart such impressions. There had never been any confidence
or communion of spirit between them. In fact, they were cast in such
different moulds that it was hardly possible there should be any.
Licorice was a sweeping and cooking machine, whose intellect was wholly
uncultivated, and whose imagination all ran into cunning and deceit.
Belasez was an article of much finer quality, both mentally and morally.
The only person in her own family with whom she could exchange thought
or feeling was Abraham; and he was not her equal, though he came the
nearest to it.

It had often distressed Belasez that her mother and she seemed to have
so little in common. Many times she had tried hard to scold herself
into more love for Licorice, and had found the process a sheer
impossibility. She had now given it up with a sorrowful recognition
that it was not to be done, but a firm conviction that it was her own
fault, and that she ought to be very penitent for such hardness of
heart.

"It seems to me," continued Licorice, "that this bad young man, whose
name was De Malpas, must have cast a spell on our poor, unhappy Anegay.
For how else could a daughter of Israel come to love so vile an insect
as one of the accursed Goyim?

"For she did love him, Belasez; and a bitter grief and disgrace it was
to all her friends. Of course I need not say that the idea of a
marriage between them was an odious impossibility. The only resource
was to take Anegay away from Lincoln, where she would learn to forget
all about the creeping creature