“Well, I suppose I can spare my groom quite enough to teach you all he knows,” Florimel said, with what Clementina took for a marked absence of expression. She reddened. But she was not one to defend herself before her principles.
“If he can, why should he not?” she said. “But it was of his friend Mr Graham I was thinking—-not himself.”
“You cannot tell whether he has got anything to teach you.”
“Your groom’s testimony gives likelihood enough to make it my duty to go and see. I intend to find the place this evening.”
“It must be some little ranting methodist conventicle. He would not be allowed to preach in a church, you know.”
“Of course not! The church of England is like the apostle that forbade the man casting out devils, and got forbid himself for it —with this difference, that she won’t be forbid. Well, she chooses her portion with Dives and not Lazarus. She is the most arrant respecter of persons I know, and her Christianity is worse than a farce. It was that first of all that drove me to doubt. If I could find a place where everything was just the opposite, the poorer it was the better I should like it. It makes me feel quite wicked to hear a smug parson reading the gold ring and the goodly apparel, while the pew-openers beneath are illustrating in dumb show the very thing the apostle is pouring out the vial of his indignation upon over their heads;—doing it calmly and without a suspicion, for the parson, while he reads, is rejoicing in his heart over the increasing aristocracy of his congregation. The farce is fit to make a devil in torment laugh.”
Once more, Florimel laughed aloud.
“Another revolution, Clementina, and we shall have you heading the canaille to destroy Westminster Abbey.”
“I would follow any leader to destroy falsehood,” said Clementina. “No canaille will take that up until it meddles with their stomachs or their pew-rents.”
“Really, Clementina, you are the worst Jacobin I ever heard talk. My groom is quite an aristocrat beside you.”