St. George and St. Michael | Page 6

she had been listening to Mr. Herbert as he dwelt
feelingly on the arrogance of puritan encroachment, and the grossness
of presbyterian insolence both to kingly prerogative and episcopal
authority, and drew a touching picture of the irritant thwartings and
pitiful insults to which the gentle monarch was exposed in his attempts
to support the dignity of his divine office, and to cast its protecting skirt
over the defenceless church; and if it was with less sympathy that he
spoke of the fears which haunted the captive metropolitan, Dorothy at
least could detect no hidden sarcasm in the tone in which he expressed
his hope that Laud's devotion to the beauty of holiness might not result
in the dignity of martyrdom, as might well be feared by those who were
assured that the whole guilt of Strafford lay in his return to his duty,
and his subsequent devotion to the interests of his royal master: to all
this the girl had listened, and her still sufficiently uncertain knowledge
of the affairs of the nation had, ere the talk was over, blossomed in a
vague sense of partizanship. It was chiefly her desire after the

communion of sympathy with Richard that had led her into the mistake
of such a hasty disclosure of her new feelings.
But her following words had touched him--whether to fine issues or not
remained yet poised on the knife-edge of the balancing will. His first
emotion partook of anger. As soon as she was out of sight a spell
seemed broken, and words came.
'A boy, indeed, mistress Dorothy!' he said. 'If ever it come to what
certain persons prophesy, you may wish me in truth, and that for the
sake of your precious bishops, the boy you call me now. Yes, you are
right, mistress, though I would it had been another who told me so!
Boy indeed I am--or have been--without a thought in my head but of
her. The sound of my father's voice has been but as the wind of the
winnowing fan. In me it has found but chaff. If you will have me take a
side, though, you will find me so far worthy of you that I shall take the
side that seems to me the right one, were all the fair Dorothies of the
universe on the other. In very truth I should be somewhat sorry to find
the king and the bishops in the right, lest my lady should flatter herself
and despise me that I had chosen after her showing, forsooth! This is
master Herbert's doing, for never before did I hear her speak after such
fashion.'
While he thus spoke with himself, he stood, like the genius of the spot,
a still dusky figure on the edge of the night, into which his dress of
brown velvet, rich and sombre at once in the sunlight, all but merged.
Nearly for the first time in his life he was experiencing the difficulty of
making up his mind, not, however, upon any of the important questions,
his inattention to which had exposed him to such sudden and
unexpected severity, but merely as to whether he should seek her again
in the company of her mother and Mr. Herbert, or return home. The
result of his deliberation, springing partly, no doubt, from anger, but
that of no very virulent type, was, that he turned his back on the alley,
passed through a small opening in the yew hedge, crossed a neglected
corner of woodland, by ways better known to him than to any one else,
and came out upon the main road leading to the gates of his father's
park.

CHAPTER II

.
RICHARD AND HIS FATHER.

Richard Heywood, as to bodily fashion, was a tall and already powerful
youth. The clear brown of his complexion spoke of plentiful sunshine
and air. A merry sparkle in the depths of his hazel eyes relieved the
shadows of rather notably heavy lids, themselves heavily
overbrowed--with a suggestion of character which had not yet asserted
itself to those who knew him best. Correspondingly, his nose, although
of a Greek type, was more notable for substance than clearness of line
or modelling; while his lips had a boyish fulness along with a
definiteness of bow-like curve, which manly resolve had not yet begun
to compress and straighten out. His chin was at least large enough not
to contradict the promise of his face; his shoulders were square, and his
chest and limbs well developed: altogether it was at present a fair
tabernacle--of whatever sort the indwelling divinity might yet turn out,
fashioning it further after his own nature.
His father and he were the only male descendants of an old
Monmouthshire family, of neither Welsh nor Norman, but as pure
Saxon blood