Few people are at their best in the early morning before breakfast, after any special fatigue on the previous day, and Hilary, who at another time might have been capable of seeing the weak points in Dr. Rogers’s harangue, drank it in now without any misgivings, reflecting all the time what a bulwark it would make against that secret dread lest she should be conquered by Gabriel’s love.
And so it came to pass, that whereas on the previous night she had been gentle-minded and sorrowing over her own shortcomings, when morning service time came and they all went by the little wicket-gate in the drive to the church close by, she was in a very different mood, and never prayed a single prayer, because the whole time she was picturing the scene in the cathedral described by Dr. Rogers.
“It is to vile men like this that Gabriel has allied himself,” she thought, indignantly; “men without any reverence, men who have turned the Bishops out of the House of Lords, and who would fain abolish the Prayer-book! Nothing is sacred to them--not even a church!”
It never occurred to her that perhaps by her thoughts she was more grossly desecrating the building she deemed sacred than the troops of Lord Essex had desecrated the cathedral, which, of course, in Puritan eyes, was only a large building that could at once be used as a shelter from the cold, and which they considered no more sacred than the rest of the world to Him Whose throne is the heaven and Whose footstool is the earth.
Dr. Rogers remained to the noontide meal, and then rode on to other houses to impart his news. When he had gone the Bishop was closeted alone for some time with Mrs. Unett, and at length Hilary was summoned to the family conclave. She had no misgivings now, all the tenderness of the previous evening had vanished, and the kindly old Bishop was astonished at the change that had come over her.
“Child,” he said, “I am much grieved to learn from your mother that Gabriel Harford hath ranged himself on the side of the Parliament. It is doubtless the effect of overmuch intercourse with Sir Robert Harley. Still matters of State, matters soon I trust to be satisfactorily settled, need not greatly affect your future happiness. God forbid that I should part you from one I know to be as clean-souled a man as you will ever meet. An you still love him I will not refuse to wed you in due time.”