Somerset heedfully remarked that he thought he recognized that name Power, as one he had seen lately, somewhere or other. ‘Perhaps you have been hearing of her father. Do you know what he was?’ Somerset did not. She looked across the distant country, where undulations of dark-green foliage formed a prospect extending for miles. And as she watched, and Somerset’s eyes, led by hers, watched also, a white streak of steam, thin as a cotton thread, could be discerned ploughing that green expanse. ‘Her father made THAT,’ Miss De Stancy said, directing her finger towards the object. ‘That what?’ ‘That railway. He was Mr. John Power, the great railway contractor. And it was through making the railway that he discovered this castle--the railway was diverted a little on its account.’ ‘A clash between ancient and modern.’ ‘Yes, but he took an interest in the locality long before he purchased the estate. And he built the people a chapel on a bit of freehold he bought for them. He was a great Nonconformist, a staunch Baptist up to the day of his death--a much stauncher one,’ she said significantly, ‘than his daughter is.’ ‘Ah, I begin to spot her!’ ‘You have heard about the baptism?’ ‘I know something of it.’ ‘Her conduct has given mortal offence to the scattered people of the denomination that her father was at such pains to unite into a body.’ Somerset could guess the remainder, and in thinking over the circumstances did not state what he had seen. She added, as if disappointed at his want of curiosity-- ‘She would not submit to the rite when it came to the point. The water looked so cold and dark and fearful, she said, that she could not do it to save her life.’ ‘Surely she should have known her mind before she had gone so far?’ Somerset’s words had a condemnatory form, but perhaps his actual feeling was that if Miss Power had known her own mind, she would have not interested him half so much. ‘Paula’s own mind had nothing to do with it!’ said Miss De Stancy, warming up to staunch partizanship in a moment. ‘It was all undertaken by her from a mistaken sense of duty. It was her father’s dying wish that she should make public profession of her--what do you call it--of the denomination she belonged to, as soon as she felt herself fit to do it: so when he was dead she tried and tried, and didn’t get any more fit; and at last she screwed herself up to the pitch, and thought she must undergo the ceremony out of pure reverence for his memory. It was very short-sighted of her father to put her in such a position: because she is now very sad, as she feels she can never try again after such a sermon as was delivered against her.’ Somerset presumed that Miss Power need not have heard this Knox or Bossuet of hers if she had chosen to go away?