In the long run, however, Antonio could not judge them harshly. Five or six of the great houses he visited were called This or That Abbey, or The Other Priory, and their spacious halls had been the refectories or chapter-houses of religious orders. Often a mouldering arch or a traceried window of the monks' church had been conserved for its picturesqueness; and as Antonio lingered among these holy relics he could understand the negation of the Papacy and the denunciation of monasticism on which the Tudor aristocrats founded their fortunes and builded their houses. Early one morning as he stood beside a broken pillar which alone survived to mark the site of one of the most renowned monasteries in Britain, his heart sank at the thought of his own white chapel, fronting the Atlantic storms all neglected and forsaken. If, after three hundred years, no one had restored these waste places of Zion in England, how could he hope, single-handed, to do better in Portugal? But he remembered with joy the essential difference. Portugal had torn a limb from the Church: but she had not lost the Faith. Amidst this whirl of distractions Antonio was secretly living his religious life with unwonted fervor. Not only did he recite the Office with close attention but he lost no opportunity of fighting on the angels' side. As the acknowledged expert of the company he told the truth emphatically about spirits, and even preached up French clarets as against the Englishman's favorite liquored port. At first these opinions disconcerted Mr. Crowberry: but, at the second hearing, he took Antonio on one side and astonished him by saying that it was the cleverest move he had ever seen in his life. Antonio, however, could endure this cynical misjudgment: for he had the satisfaction of knowing that he had frightened at least one brandy-sot out of his ugly and suicidal habit.