'Oh, I'm not a bit tired—not a bit! I was thinking—I was thinking of that photograph in the next room—and a line of poetry.'
She spoke with the naïveté of one who had not known how to avoid the confession. 'What line?' said Mrs. Burgoyne.
'It's Milton. I learnt it at school. You will know it, of course,' she said timidly. 'It's the line about "the triple tyrant" and "the Babylonian woe"'—
Mrs. Burgoyne laughed.
'Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple tyrant—
Was that what you were thinking of?'
Miss Foster had coloured deeply.
'It was the cap—the tiara, isn't it?—that reminded me,' she said faintly; and then she looked away, as though not wishing to continue the subject.
'She wonders whether I am a Catholic,' thought Mrs. Burgoyne, amused, 'and whether she has hurt my feelings.'—Aloud, she said—'Are you very, very Puritan still in your part of America? Excuse me, but I am dreadfully ignorant about America.'
'We are Methodists in our little town mostly'—said Miss Foster. 'There is a Presbyterian church—and the best families go there. But my father's people were always Methodists. My mother was a Universalist.'