She had inherited all her father's tender piety, and
lived, like him, on the most intimate terms with the spiritual world. And
though, of course, by training she was Puritan, by character she was
Puritan too. As a girl of fourteen she had gone with Anthony to see the
cleansing of the village temple. They had stood together at the west end
of the church a little timid at the sight of that noisy crowd in the
quiet house of prayer; but she had felt no disapproval at that fierce
vindication of truth. Her father had taught her of course that the purest
worship was that which was only spiritual; and while since childhood she
had seen Sunday by Sunday the Great Rood overhead, she had never paid it
any but artistic attention. The men had the ropes round it now, and it
was swaying violently to and fro; and then, even as the children watched,
a tie had given, and the great cross with its pathetic wide-armed figure
had toppled forward towards the nave, and then crashed down on the
pavement. A fanatic ran out and furiously kicked the thorn-crowned head
twice, splintering the hair and the features, and cried out on it as an
idol; and yet Isabel, with all her tenderness, felt nothing more than a
vague regret that a piece of carving so ancient and so delicate should be
broken.
But when the work was over, and the crowd and Anthony with them had
stamped out, directed by the justices, dragging the figures and the old
vestments with them to the green, she had seen something which touched
her heart much more.
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