"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.'"