"A difference that has law and education besides religion behind it, goes deep. Times are changed, but it goes deep still."
There was a pause. Then she looked at him with a whimsical lifting of her brows.
"Bannisdale was not amusing?" she said.
He laughed good-humouredly. "Not for a woman, certainly. For a man, yes. There was plenty of rough sport and card-playing, and a good deal of drinking. The men were full of character, often full of ability. But there was no outlet—and a wretched education. My great-grandfather might have been saved by a commission in the army. But the law forbade it him. So they lived to themselves and by themselves; they didn't choose to live with their Protestant neighbours—who had made them outlaws and inferiors! And, of course, they sank in manners and refinement. You may see the results in all the minor Catholic families to this day—that is, the old families. The few great houses that remained faithful escaped many of the drawbacks of the position. The smaller ones suffered, and succumbed. But they had their compensations!"
As he spoke he rose from the grass, and the dogs, springing up, barked joyously about him.
"Augustina will be waiting dinner for us, I think."
Laura, who had meant to stay behind, saw that she was expected to walk home with him. She rose unwillingly, and moved on beside him.
"Their compensations?" That meant the Mass and all the rest of this tyrannous clinging religion. What did it honestly mean to Mr. Helbeck—to anybody? She remembered her father's rough laugh. "There are twelve hundred men, my dear, belonging to the Athenaeum Club. I give you the bishops. After them, what do you suppose religion has to say to the rest of the twelve hundred? How many of them ever give a thought to it?"
She raised her eyes, furtively, to Helbeck's face. In spite of its melancholy lines, she had lately begun to see that its fundamental expression was a contented one. That, no doubt, came from the "compensations." But to-day there was more. She was positively startled by his look of happiness as he strode silently along beside her. It was all the more striking because of the plain traces left upon him by Lenten fatigue and "mortification."
It was Easter day, and she supposed he had come from Communion.