"Your Kate! She is my Kate as much as yours. Such a thought as that would be an injury to me as deep as to you. You know that to me my Kate, our Kate, is all excellence,—as pure and good as she is bright and beautiful. As God is above us she shall be my wife,—but I cannot take her to Scroope Manor as my wife while my uncle lives."
"Why should any one be ashamed of her at Scroope Manor?"
"Because they are fools. But I cannot cure them of their folly. My uncle thinks that I should marry one of my own class."
"Class;—what class? He is a gentleman, I presume, and she is a lady."
"That is very true;—so true that I myself shall act upon the truth. But I will not make his last years wretched. He is a Protestant, and you are Catholics."
"What is that? Are not ever so many of your lords Catholics? Were they not all Catholics before Protestants were ever thought of?"
"Mrs. O'Hara, I have told you that to me she is as high and good and noble as though she were a Princess. And I have told you that she shall be my wife. If that does not content you, I cannot help it. It contents her. I owe much to her."
"Indeed you do;—everything."
"But I owe much to him also. I do not think that you can gain anything by quarrelling with me."
She paused for a while before she answered him, looking into his face the while with something of the ferocity of a tigress. So intent was her gaze that his eyes quailed beneath it. "By the living God," she said, "if you injure my child I will have the very blood from your heart."