“You could n't help it. You must stand it; at least, till such time as a good many others, equally aggrieved as yourself, resolve to risk something to change it; and this is remote enough, for there is nothing that men—I mean educated and cultivated men—are more averse to, than any open confession of feeling a social disqualification. I may tell it to you here, as we sit over the fire, but I 'll not go out and proclaim it, I promise you. These are confessions one keeps for the fireside.”
“And will not these people visit you?”
“Nothing less likely.”
“Nor you call upon them?”
“Certainly not.”
“And will you continue to live within an hour's drive of each other without acquaintance or recognition?”
“Probably—at least we may salute when we meet.”
“Then I say the guillotine has done more for civilization than the schoolmaster,” cried the other. “And all this because you are a Papist?”
“Just so. I belong to a faith so deeply associated with a bygone inferiority that I am not to be permitted to emerge from it—there's the secret of it all.”
“I 'd rebel. I 'd descend into the streets!”