"I don't want to think of it," says her friend, desperately.
"But do," goes on Violet, in her soft, even monotone, that is so exactly suited to her face. "It is rather pleasant thinking. Confession, you know, is so soothing; and then there are always the dear saints, with their delightful tales of roses and lilies, and tears that turn into drops of healing balm, and their bones that lie in little glass cases in the churches abroad. It is all so picturesque and pretty, like an Italian landscape. And it is so comfortable, too, to know that, no matter how naughty we may be here, we can still get to heaven at last by doing some great and charitable deed."
"There is something in that, certainly," says Captain Rodney, with feeling. "I wonder, now, what great and charitable deed I could do."
"And then isn't it sweet to think," continues Violet, warming to her subject, "that when one's friends are dead one can still be of some service to them, in praying for their souls? It seems to keep them always with one. They don't seem so lost to us as they would otherwise."
"Violet, please do not talk like that; I forbid it," says Lady Rodney, in a horrified tone. "Nothing could make me think well of anything connected with this—this odious girl; and when you speak like that you quite upset me. You will be having your name put in that horrid list of perverts in the 'Whitehall Review' if you don't take care."
"You really will, you know," says Captain Rodney, warningly; then, as though ambitious of piling up the agony, he says, sotto voce, yet loud enough to be heard, "I wonder if Geoff will go to mass with her?"
"It is exactly what I expect to hear next," says Geoff's mother, with the calmness of despair.
Then there is silence for a full minute, during which Miss Mansergh casts a reproachful glance at the irrepressible Jack.
"Well, I hope he has married a good girl, at all events," says Sir Nicholas, presently, with a sigh. But at this reasonable hope Lady Rodney once more gives way to bitter sobs.
"Oh, to think Geoffrey should marry 'a good girl'!" she says, weeping sadly. "One would think you were speaking of a servant! Oh! it is too cruel!" Here she rises and makes for the door, but on the threshold pauses to confront Sir Nicholas with angry eyes. "To hope the wretched boy had married 'a good girl'!" she says, indignantly: "I never heard such an inhuman wish from one brother to another!"