Alvar paused and put his hand across his eyes, with more emotion than he often showed.
“She thought,” he continued, “that I should perhaps become a Catholic if I married a Sevillana, and that my father’s neglect would make me altogether a De la Rosa. Forgive me, Cherito, it is not quite to be forgotten.”
“I think it was very likely to be the case,” said Cheriton.
“No, it was not the part for my father’s son, nor for an Englishman, nor did my grandfather wish it. I am no Catholic—never!”
“I suppose your tutor was—was a strong Protestant?” said Cheriton, rather surprised at the first religious conviction he had ever heard from Alvar’s lips.
“Well, I do not think you would have approved of him nor my father if he had known. He, what is it you say?—did no duty—and I do not think he was much like your Mr Ellesmere. He told me that he was paid ‘to put the English doctrines into me and teach me to speak English;’ and he would say, ‘Remember it is your part to be a Protestant because you are an English gentleman.’”
“But,” said Cherry, “when you came to England you must surely have seen that we did not look on it in that way?”
“I did not much attend to your words on it,” said Alvar. “As you know, what my father required of me I did, and I saw that English gentlemen thought much of their churches and their priests—or at least, that my father did so. I conformed, but I had not expected that in England, too, I should be a foreigner—a stranger. And I would not be other than my real self.”
“I’m afraid we were very unkind to you.”
“You? Never!” said Alvar.