“I don’t know that she’s right,” Giles muttered. “You must have surprised her very much, indeed, Alix. It’s been left, then, as you intended to have it left?”
“Yes. For the present. I told Lady Mary that nothing could be done till she and Maman had met and I wrote to Maman and told her of the offer of marriage. I put only the difficulties before Maman. I am afraid Maman will see the advantages rather than the difficulties.”
“The difficulties being that you cannot give up France and cannot give up your religion?”
“Yes. And Lady Mary may have others quite of her own. Maman will have to face them all. But I think she and Lady Mary will understand one another.”
“And for yourself, which do you feel the greater difficulty, Alix;—your country or your religion? You never strike me as having any religion at all, you know. You always seem to me, as I told you long ago, just a little pagan.”
“Ah, if it were for myself,” said Alix, “I could give up my religion more easily than my country. Only my Church would not allow me to marry a heretic unless I promised about the children. It is simply not allowed with us, Giles.—Do you not know?”
“But why not turn heretic yourself, and settle the children like that?” Giles exclaimed, controlling, she saw, a strong inclination to laughter.
But Alix knew that though she was not dévote there were some things deeper even than France, or were they not the deepest things in France? They were there, to be taken or left, as one chose; but even if she left them they were still there, part of her heritage; like a great landscape on which one might not care to open one’s windows. And it was a heritage of which one could not deprive others, whatever use one made of it oneself.
“That I could never do,” she said, shaking her head. “I could not go against my Church. However much I cared, Giles, I could never be a Protestant.”