"What true? that I am a Roman Catholic? Oh, certainly; don't you understand, that's why I am reading so hard for the schools?" said Charles.
"Come, be serious for a moment, Reding," said Bateman, "do be serious. Will you empower me to contradict the report, or to negative it to a certain point, or in any respect?"
"Oh, to be sure," said Charles, "contradict it, by all means, contradict it entirely."
"May I give it a plain, unqualified, unconditional, categorical, flat denial?" asked Bateman.
"Of course, of course."
Bateman could not make him out, and had not a dream how he was teasing him. "I don't know where to find you," he said. They paced down the walk in silence.
Bateman began again. "You see," he said, "it would be such a wonderful blindness, it would be so utterly inexcusable in a person like yourself, who had known what the Church of England was; not a Dissenter, not an unlettered layman; but one who had been at Oxford, who had come across so many excellent men, who had seen what the Church of England could be, her grave beauty, her orderly and decent activity; who had seen churches decorated as they should be, with candlesticks, ciboriums, faldstools, lecterns, antependiums, piscinas, rood-lofts, and sedilia; who, in fact, had seen the Church Service carried out, and could desiderate nothing;—tell me, my dear good Reding," taking hold of his button-hole, "what is it you want—what is it? name it."
"That you would take yourself off," Charles would have said, had he spoken his mind; he merely said, however, that really he desiderated nothing but to be believed when he said that he had no intention of leaving his own Church. Bateman was incredulous, and thought him close. "Perhaps you are not aware," he said, "how much is known of the circumstances of your being sent down. The old Principal was full of the subject."
"What! I suppose he told people right and left," said Reding.
"Oh, yes," answered Bateman; "a friend of mine knows him, and happening to call on him soon after you went down, had the whole story from him. He spoke most kindly of you, and in the highest terms; said that it was deplorable how much your mind was warped by the prevalent opinions, and that he should not be surprised if it turned out you were a Romanist even while you were at St. Saviour's; anyhow, that you would be one day a Romanist for certain, for that you held that the saints reigning with Christ interceded for us in heaven. But what was stronger, when the report got about, Sheffield said that he was not surprised at it, that he always prophesied it."