ftly, and
she did not resist.

"The only doubt," she said presently, as if she talked to herself, "is
whether you had best be gone at Easter, or stay and face it out."

"Yes," said Robin, with his dismay come fully to the birth.

Then she turned on him, full of a sudden tenderness and compassion.

"Oh! my Robin," she cried, "and I have not said a word about you and
your own misery. I was thinking but of Christ's honour. You must forgive
me.... What must it be for you!... That it should be your father! You
are sure that he means it?"

"My father does not speak until he means it. He is always like that. He
asks counsel from no one. He thinks and he thinks, and then he speaks;
and it is finished."

She fell then to thinking again, her sweet lips compressed together, and
her eyes frightened and wondering, searching round the hanging above the
chimney-breast. (It presented Icarus in the chariot of the sun; and it
was said in Derby that it had come from my lord Abbot's lodging at
Bolton.)

Meantime Robin thought too. He was as wax in the hands of this girl, and
knew it, and loved that it should be so. Yet he could not help his
dismay while he waited for her seal to come down on him and stamp him to
her model. For he foresaw more clearly than ever now the hundred
inconveniences that must follow, now that it was evident that to
Marjorie's mind (and therefore to God Almighty's) there must be no
tampering with the old religion. He had known that it must be so; yet he
had thought, on the way here, of a dozen families he knew who, in his
own memory, had changed from allegiance to the Pope of Rome to that of
her Grace, without seeming one penny the worse. There were the Martins,
down there in Derby; the Squire and his lady of Ashenden Hall; the
Conways of Matlock; and the rest--these had all changed; and though he
did not respect them for it, yet the truth was that they were not yet
stricken by thunderbolts or eaten by the plague. He had wondered whether
there were not a way to do as they had done, yet without the disgrace of
it.... However, this was plainly not to be so with him. He must put up
with the inconveniences as well as he could, and he just waited to hear
from Marjorie how this must be done.

She turned to him again at last. Twice her lips opened to speak, and
twice she closed them again. Robin continued to stroke her hand and wait
for judgment. The third time she spoke.

"I think you must go away," she said, "