“But boy and girl!” sneered the man.  “A couple of blind puppies, I would say rather—­you with your falcons and mare and your other toys, and the down on your chin, and your conscience; and she with her white face and her mother and her linen-parlour and her beads”—­(his charity prevailed so far as to hinder him from more outspoken contempt)—­“And you two babes have been prattling of conscience and prayers together—­I make no doubt, and thinking yourselves Cecilies and Laurences and all the holy martyrs—­and all this without a by-your-leave, I dare wager, from parent or father, and thinking yourselves man and wife; and you fondling her, and she too modest to be fondled, and—­”

The plain truth struck him with sudden splendour, at least sufficiently strong to furnish him with a question.

“And have you told Mistress Marjorie about your sad rogue of a father?”

Robin, white with anger, held his lips grimly together and the wrath blazed in an instant up from the scornful old heart, whose very love was turned to gall.

“Tell me, sir—­I will have it!” he cried.

Robin looked at him with such hard fury in his eyes that for a moment the man winced.  Then he recovered himself, and again his anger rose to the brim.

“You need not look at me like that, you hound.  Tell me, I say!”

“I will not!” shouted Robin, springing to his feet.

The old man was up too by now, with all the anger of his son hardened by his dignity.

“You will not?”

“No.”

For a moment the fate of them both still hung in the balance.  If, even at this instant, the father had remembered his love rather than his dignity, had thought of the past and its happy years, rather than of the blinding, swollen present; or, on the other side, if the son had but submitted if only for an hour, and obeyed in order that he might rule later—­the whole course might have run aright, and no hearts have been broken and no blood shed.  But neither would yield.  There was the fierce northern obstinacy in them both; the gentle birth sharpened its edge; the defiant refusal of the son, the wounding contempt of the father not for his son only, but for his son’s love—­these things inflamed the hearts of both to madness.  The father seized his ultimate right, and struck his son across the face.

Then the son answered by his only weapon.

For a sensible pause he stood there, his fresh face paled to chalkiness, except where the print of five fingers slowly reddened.  Then he made a courteous little gesture, as if to invite his father to sit down; and as the other did so, slowly and shaking all over, struck at him by careful and calculated words, delivered with a stilted and pompous air: 

“You have beaten me, sir; so, of course, I obey.  Yes, I told Mistress Marjorie Manners that my father no longer counted himself a Catholic, and would publicly turn Protestant at Easter, so as to please her Grace and be in favour with the Court and with the county justices.  And I have told Mr. Babington so as well, and also Mr. Thomas FitzHerbert.  It will spare you the pain, sir, of making any public announcement on the matter.  It is always a son’s duty to spare his father pain.”