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In looks Catherine was like her father; he too had a dark skin, a wide mouth and prominent eyes, though his eyes were not brown, but a pale, bright Saxon blue—Alard eyes. Kit Oxenbrigge had them, though in other ways he favoured his father's side of the family, with his clean-cut hawklike profile, from which a dark sweep of hair lay back like a raven's wing. He was not so countrified as his uncle or his cousin, for he had been to Winchester College, and had travelled in France and Italy. His face was shaven, and his speech, though it burred a little, was free of country idiom. Elisabeth Alard spoke the Queen's English in a slow, plaintive voice; Catherine and her father spoke unashamedly the language of the Sussex country-side, with its broad vowels and slurring consonants.

"Where hast thou been, Kate?—the fields an't saafe for a maid after dark."

"I went up to Staple to see if the bonfire burned . . . and on my way home I stopped at Holly Crouch. But, Father, a tur'ble thing hath happened—a tur'ble, larmentable thing. They've broken down the cross at Holly Horns."