"I want very much to say this, please. I knew perfectly well when I came here that you couldn't like the Masons--for many reasons." Her voice broke again. "You never liked Augustina's marriage--you weren't likely to want to see anything of papa's people. I didn't ask you to see them. All my standards and theirs are different from yours. But I prefer theirs--not yours! I have nothing to do with yours. I was brought up--well, to _hate_ yours--if one must tell the truth." She paused, half suffocated, her chest heaving. Helbeck's glance enveloped her--took in the contrast between her violent words and the shrinking delicacy of her small form. A great melting stole over the man's dark face. But he spoke dryly enough. "I imagine the standards of Protestants and Catholics are pretty much alike in matters of this kind. But don't let us waste time any more over what has already happened. I should like, I confess, to plead with you as to the future." He looked at her kindly, even entreatingly. All through this scene she had been unwittingly, angrily conscious of his personal dignity and charm--a dignity that seemed to emerge in moments of heightened action or feeling, and to slip out of sight again under the absent hermit-manner of his ordinary life. She was smarting under his words--ready to concentrate a double passion of resentment upon them, as soon as she should be alone and free to recall them. And yet---- "As to the future," she said coldly. "That is simple enough as far as one person is concerned. Hubert Mason is going to Froswick immediately, into business." "I am glad to hear it--it will be very much for his good." He stopped a moment, searching for the word of persuasion and conciliation. "Miss Fountain!--if you imagine that certain incidents which happened here long before you came into this neighbourhood had anything to do with what I have been saying now, let me assure you--most earnestly--that it is not so! I recognise fully that with regard to a certain case--of which you may have heard--the Masons and their friends honestly believed that wrong and injustice had been done. They attempted personal violence. I can hardly be expected to think it argument! But I bear them no malice. I say this because you may have heard of something that happened three or four years ago--a row in the streets, when Father Bowles and I were set upon. It has never weighed with me in the slightest, and I could have shaken hands with old Mason--who was in the crowd, and refused to stop the stone throwing--the day after. As for Mrs. Mason"--he looked up with a smile--"if she could possibly have persuaded herself to come with her daughter and see you here, my welcome would not have been wanting. But, you know, she would as soon visit Gehenna! Nobody could be more conscious than I, Miss Fountain, that this is a dreary house for a young lady to live in--and----" The colour mounted into his face, but he did not shrink from what he meant to say.