“Now may I go?  He is a-nigh.  His boat I hear at the landing;” and she stood up, intent, listening, with her fair head lifted, and her wet eyes fixed on the distance.

“Well, be it so.  Go.”

With the words she slipped from the room; and Joris called Baltus to bring him some hot coals, and began to fill his pipe.  As he did so, he watched Lysbet with some anxiety.  She had offered him no sympathy, she evinced no disposition to continue the conversation; and, though she kept her face from him, he understood that all her movements expressed a rebellious temper.  In and out of the room she passed, very busy about her own affairs, and apparently indifferent to his anxiety and sorrow.

At first Joris felt some natural anger at her attitude; but, as the Virginia calmed and soothed him, he remembered that he had told her nothing of his interview with Hyde, and that she might be feeling and reasoning from a different standpoint from himself.  Then the sweetness of his nature was at once in the ascendant, and he said, “Lysbet, come then, and talk with me about the child.”

She turned the keys in her press slowly, and stood by it with them in her hand.  “What has been told thee, Joris, to-day?  And who has spoken?  Tongues evil and envious, I am sure of that.”

“Thou art wrong.  The young man to me spoke himself.  He said, ’I love your daughter.  I want to marry her.’”

“Well, then, he did no wrong.  And as for Katrijntje, it is in nature that a young girl should want a lover.  It is in nature she should choose the one she likes best.  That is what I say.”

“That is what I say, Lysbet.  It is in nature, also, that we want too much food and wine, too much sleep, too much pleasure, too little work.  It is in nature that our own way we want.  It is in nature that the good we hate, and the sin we love.  My Lysbet, to us God gives his own good grace, that the things that are in nature we might put below the reason and the will.”

“So hard that is, Joris.”

“No, it is not; so far thou hast done the right way.  When Katherine was a babe, it was in nature that with the fire she wanted to make play.  But thou said, ‘There is danger, my precious one;’ and in thy arms thou carried her out of the temptation.  When older she grew, it was in nature she said, ’I like not the school, and my Heidelberg is hard, and I cannot learn it.’  But thou answered, ’For thy good is the school, and go thou every day; and for thy salvation is thy catechism, and I will see that thou learn it well.’  Now, then, it is in nature the child should want this handsome stranger; but with me thou wilt certainly say, ’He is not fit for thy happiness; he has not the true faith, he gambles, he fights duels, he is a waster, he lives badly, he will take thee far from thy own people and thy own home.’”

“Can the man help that he was born an Englishman and a Lutheran?”

“They have their own women.  Look now, from the beginning it has been like to like.  Thou may see in the Holy Scriptures that, after Esau married the Hittite woman, he sold his birthright, and became a wanderer and a vagabond.  And it is said that it was a ’grief of mind unto Isaac and Rebekah.’  I am sorry this day for Isaac and Rebekah.  The heart of the father is the same always.”