“Mother, you did the like at my father’s call!”
“Our parents approved!”
“If they had not, would you have abandoned him?”
“I cannot reply; it is for you to answer me.... Would you, had this man loved and sought you in marriage, have changed your religion and embraced his?”
“Mother, you ask a question I need not answer. He did not love me ... he never sought me.... Were our paths, that lie so far apart, to cross now ... did he ask of me that which I might once have gladly given, I should deny it, knowing him to be unworthy of the gift.”
“Ada, I must have your answer! Would you have deserted the faith of your Protestant forefathers?”
“It may be, mother, that I should have returned to the faith in which their fathers lived and died. Remember, we Merlings were Catholic before the Reformation.”
“Those were dark days for England. A purer light has shown the path to a better world since then.”
“Dear one,” the sweet voice pleaded, “we have never thought alike upon this matter.”
“To my bitter, secret sorrow,” the mother answered, “I have long known that we did not; or say, since you returned from your course of study in the Paris hospitals I have seen it, and guessed at the reason of the change! For you have lived with Roman Catholic nuns in convents, Ada, and have listened to their specious arguments. Snares may have been set—may Heaven pardon me if I judge wrongly!—to lure the English heiress into the nets of Rome.”