Aunt B. chuckled. "You have become very wise in your generation, Ferlie. And did she?"
"She could not resist correcting the term to 'perversion'," said Ferlie, "and it would have been so easy to have kept it at 'vert'."
"Her father, the bishop, must often have shown himself impressively sarcastic upon the query, 'Can there any good come out of the Vatican?'" mused Aunt B. "And your mother always had an indefensible memory for things best forgotten."
"What on earth does it matter to anybody but Peter? His argument is that, as he has no time to go into the matter of a Personal God's existence thoroughly himself and is by no means convinced that the same Deity has ceased to exist at the bidding of admirable rationalists like Father, it is best for him to join a cocksure religion, wherein he knows what he has got to believe and he knows what he has got to do. I think Peter could only be held by a religion that was cocksure. And he is, also, a little mistrustful of his own judgment these days, and certainly all for strengthening the matrimonial chain."
"And your own views, Ferlie?"
"To give according as one receives," said Ferlie wearily.
Far from satisfied was Brillianna Trefusis on her way back to town. She had been told that Cyprian Sterne had shown little or no interest in Ferlie's affairs and her shrewd brain was being interrogative. What had he thought of this marriage who knew the Ferlie-nature so well?
"Perhaps—Another Woman," reasoned Aunt B., "though, somehow, the idea does not fit. I used to consider the situation dangerous because the child got such little understanding at home. But, apart from the difference in ages, those two 'belonged'."
Then she warned herself that her imagination was getting out of hand. Ferlie, at present, would have been more unnatural without moods than with them.
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