‘You are not at enmity with Anglicanism, I am sure?’
‘I want not to be. I want to be—what—’
‘What the De Stancys were, and are,’ he said insidiously; and her silenced bearing told him that he had hit the nail.
It was a strange idea to get possession of such a nature as hers, and for a minute he felt himself on the side of the minister. So strong was Somerset’s feeling of wishing her to show the quality of fidelity to paternal dogma and party, that he could not help adding—
‘But have you forgotten that other nobility—the nobility of talent and enterprise?’
‘No. But I wish I had a well-known line of ancestors.’
‘You have. Archimedes, Newcomen, Watt, Telford, Stephenson, those are your father’s direct ancestors. Have you forgotten them? Have you forgotten your father, and the railways he made over half Europe, and his great energy and skill, and all connected with him as if he had never lived?’
She did not answer for some time. ‘No, I have not forgotten it,’ she said, still looking into the pew. ‘But, I have a predilection d’artiste for ancestors of the other sort, like the De Stancys.’
Her hand was resting on the low pew next the high one of the De Stancys. Somerset looked at the hand, or rather at the glove which covered it, then at her averted cheek, then beyond it into the pew, then at her hand again, until by an indescribable consciousness that he was not going too far he laid his own upon it.
‘No, no,’ said Paula quickly, withdrawing her hand. But there was nothing resentful or haughty in her tone—nothing, in short, which makes a man in such circumstances feel that he has done a particularly foolish action.