sed 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.

And so the evening passed in talk. When Sir Nicholas had finished supper,
they all went upstairs to my lady's withdrawing-room on the first floor.
This was always a strange and beautiful room to Isabel. It was panelled
like the room below, but was more delicately furnished, and a tall harp
stood near the window to which my lady sang sometimes in a sweet
tremulous old voice, while Sir Nicholas nodded at the fire. Isabel, too,
had had some lessons here from the old lady; but even this mild vanity
troubled her puritan conscience a little sometimes. Then the room, too,
had curious and attractive things in it. A high niche in the oak over the
fireplace held a slender image of Mary and her Holy Child, and from the
Child's fingers hung a pair of beads. Isabel had a strange sense
sometimes as if this holy couple had taken refuge in that niche when they
were driven from the church; but it seemed to her in her steadier moods
that this was a superstitious fancy, and had the nature of sin.

This evening the old lady went to her harp, while Isabel sat down near
her in the wide window seat and looked out over the dark lawn, where the
white dial glimmered like a phantom, and thought of Anthony again. Sir
Nicholas went and stretched himself before the fire, and closed his eyes,
for he was old, and tired with his long ride; and Hubert sat down in a
dark corner near him whence he could watch Isabel. After a few rippling
chords my lady began to sing a song by Sir Thomas Wyatt, whom she and Sir
Nicholas had known in their youth; and which she had caused to be set to
music by some foreign chapel