The big man took it in good part. "Someone has been prompting you, young man," he said kindly.
"Father Vassall," replied Paul instantly.
"Ah! Have you ever been abroad?" The elder man's voice hardened subtly.
"No."
"Well, don't judge Roman Catholicism by its appearance in England. It's at its best here. It wears Sunday clothes. Priests don't keep mistresses in England, and the worship of the saints is not quite the idolatry it is in Italy."
Paul flushed suddenly, but sat silent.
"Concubinage is a regular thing in Spain," went on the other suavely. "In France they're very dubious about the Pope. In England, below the surface, they are as disunited pretty nearly as we are. In South America, the people would have more religion if they were still heathen."
Paul recalled, in a swift flood of memory, his meeting with Father Kenelm at Cambridge. He recalled his stories of immense adoring crowds, of persecution willingly endured, of heroic self-sacrifices for the propagation of the faith. Still more he remembered how the father, eagerly talking to him, had seemed to take it for granted that he was a Catholic; and how he, feeling that he must be honest, had said he was not; and how instantly, across the crowded drawing-room, without a trace of nervousness or any sense of indecorum, the sudden stab of the poignant question had flashed—"Oh, but Mr. Kestern, surely you love our Lord?" Would such a man condone immorality?
The boy's face hardened. "There was an Iscariot among the Apostles, Bishop," he said.
"Yes, one. Not eleven out of twelve."