Mrs. Campian appeared at luncheon. The bishop was attentive to her; even cordial. He was resolved she should not feel he was annoyed by her not having been a member of his congregation in the morning. Lady Corisande too had said to him: “I wish so much you would talk to Mrs. Campian; she is a sweet, noble creature, and so clever! I feel that she might be brought to view things in the right light.”
“I never know,” said the bishop, “how to deal with these American ladies. I never can make out what they believe, or what they disbelieve. It is a sort of confusion between Mrs. Beecher Stowe and the Fifth Avenue congregation and—Barnum,” he added with a twinkling eye.
The second service was late; the dean preached. The lateness of the hour permitted the lord-lieutenant and those guests who had arrived only the previous day to look over the castle, or ramble about the gardens. St. Aldegonde succeeded in his scheme of a real long walk with the Campians, which Lothair, bound to listen to the head of his college, was not permitted to share.
In the evening Signor Mardoni, who had arrived, and Madame Isola Bella, favored them with what they called sacred music; principally prayers from operas and a grand Stabat Mater.
Lord Culloden invited Lothair into a farther saloon, where they might speak without disturbing the performers or the audience.
“I’ll just take advantage, my dear boy,” said Lord Culloden, in a tone of unusual tenderness, and of Doric accent, “of the absence of these gentlemen to have a little quiet conversation with you. Though I have not seen so much of you of late as in old days, I take a great interest in you, no doubt of that, and I was very pleased to see how good-natured you were to the girls. You have romped with them when they were little ones. Now, in a few hours, you will be master of a great inheritance, and I hope it will profit ye. I have been over the accounts with Mr. Giles, and I was pleased to hear that you had made yourself properly acquainted with them in detail. Never you sign any paper without reading it first, and knowing well what it means. You will have to sign a release to us if you be satisfied, and that you may easily be. My poor brother-in-law left you as large an income as may be found on this side Trent, but I will be bound he would stare if he saw the total of the whole of your rent-roll, Lothair. Your affairs have been well administered, though I say it who ought not. But it is not my management only, or principally, that has done it. It is the progress of the country, and you owe the country a good deal, and you should never forget you are born to be a protector of its liberties, civil and religious. And if the country sticks to free trade, and would enlarge its currency, and be firm to the Protestant faith, it will, under Divine Providence, continue to progress.
“And here, my boy, I’ll just say a word, in no disagreeable manner, about your religious principles. There are a great many stories about, and perhaps they are not true, and I am sure I hope they are not. If popery were only just the sign of the cross, and music, and censer-pots, though I think them all superstitious, I’d be free to leave them alone if they would leave me. But popery is a much deeper thing than that, Lothair, and our fathers found it out. They could not stand it, and we should be a craven crew to stand it now. A man should be master in his own house. You will be taking a wife, some day; at least it is to be hoped so; and how will you like one of these monsignores to be walking into her bedroom, eh; and talking to her alone when he pleases, and where he pleases; and when you want to consult your wife, which a wise man should often do, to find there is another mind between hers and yours? There’s my girls, they are just two young geese, and they have a hankering after popery, having had a Jesuit in the house. I do not know what has become of the women. They are for going into a convent, and they are quite right in that, for if they be papists they will not find a husband easily in Scotland, I ween.
“And as for you, my boy, they will be telling you that it is only just this and just that, and there’s no great difference, and what not; but I tell you that, if once you embrace the scarlet lady, you are a tainted corpse. You’ll not be able to order your dinner without a priest, and they will ride your best horses without saying with your leave or by your leave.”
The concert in time ceased; there was a stir in the room; the Rev. Dionysius Smylie moved about mysteriously, and ultimately seemed to make an obeisance before the bishop. It was time for prayers.
“Shall you go?” said Lord St. Aldegonde to Mrs. Campian, by whom he was sitting.