‘And I will speak truth,’ she said proudly, ’as if I stood before an angel of God; and it shall not grieve you.  Andrew Golding, thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.  The Church that I dreamed of, the Church I would have died for, was not a Church stained with innocent blood.  I will cast in my lot, now and for ever, with the only Christian people that have never persecuted another—­the only one, I verily believe, that follow whithersoever the Master leads.’

At this Andrew’s pallid face glowed as if a clear flame shone through it; he stretched out his hands to Althea, and she gave him both hers, continuing to say,—­

’And what is my native land to me? it is filled with violence and madness; I fear ’tis accursed of God; I am willing to find my fatherland wherever you find a home.’

She turned with a defying look towards us; at which Harry began to laugh, and said, ’How about the rose I had one night from Mistress Althea Dacre? it is a rose yet—­dry and faded truly; but it has not turned into a nettle.’

‘Be generous,’ she said, blushing; ’do not remind me of that; I spoke of it in the days of my folly.  I have been taught the plague of my own heart since, by many a sharp lesson.’

‘Well,’ said Harry, ’I may truly say the same of myself.  It hath pleased God,’ he said reverently, ’to bring me to Himself through suffering.  I trusted overmuch to my own heart; and not till I was stript of all, a beggar and a slave, did I learn mine own vileness and weakness, and Christ’s all-sufficiency.  I thank Him for the teaching.  And I think my Lucy hath gone through the same school; is it not so, sweetheart?’ and I murmured an assent.

‘Not one of you,’ said Andrew, ’has been so poor a pupil at that learning as I; but I think my many stripes have surely beaten it into my hard heart at last, and that I have mastered my task once and for ever.’

‘Then,’ quoth Harry, ’we are all on one footing so far, and we may thank Heaven for it.  But I cannot fall in with you in your condemning of other Churches, and the Church of England chiefly.  She is not disowned of God, not quite gone astray from Him; there is in her, I must think, a seed of life and holiness.’

‘Your father went out from her notwithstanding,’ says Althea; ’and in my mind he did well, though I was fool enough to condemn him at the time.’

‘With your leave,’ says Harry, ’I think he was driven out, because of those nice and subtle points of doctrine, that our rulers cruelly enforced, and he could not honestly assent to.  But I have heard him say, ’tis his firm persuasion that out of this misgoverned English Church there shall yet rise great good, and marvellous blessings, to the land and the world.  And in that hope I shall cleave to it with all its faults; and so I trust will my wife;’ to which I had nothing to say but blushing.  Andrew, however, was troubled.

‘I fear thou art in perilous error, kind and good Harry,’ said he.  ’But let every one be fully persuaded in his own mind.’