My lord waxed peevish, and drummed his fingers on the shutters and yawned in the face of Curran, for he sniffed in the wind a quarrel which would bore him. If folks would only refrain, he thought, from gabbling about these Catholics, what a comfort it would be. My lady, usually disagreeable, was threatening a scene; for they had got on the one subject which set all the family agog. Her spouse wished heartily that she would retire to the family vault, or be less ill-tempered; for what can be more odious than a snappish better-half? Religious differences had set the country by the ears ever since the Reformation, turning father against son, kinsman against kinsman; and this especial family was no exception to the rule. Lady Glandore hated the Papists with all the energy of one whose soul is filled with gall, and who lacks a fitting outlet for its bitterness. What must then have been her feelings when, ten years before the opening of this chronicle, her only brother, whom she loved, thought fit to wed a Catholic? It was a weak, faded chit of a thing who lived for a year after her marriage in terror of my lady, gave birth to a daughter and then died. The countess, who had endured her existence under protest, was glad at least that she was well behaved enough to die; some people said indeed that she had frightened Arthur's submissive wife into her untimely grave. Be this as it may, the incubus removed, my lady girded up her loins for the effacing of the blot on the escutcheon. The puling slut was gone--that was a mercy. Why had she not proved barren? There was still a way of setting matters straight. Little Doreen must be washed clean from Papist mummeries, and received into the bosom of THE Church, and the world would forget in course of time how the young lawyer, usually as soft as wax, had flown in the face of his belongings. To her horror and amazement Arthur for once proved adamant--he who had always given way rather than break a lance in the lists--sternly commanding his sister to hold her tongue. His Papist wife, whom he regretted sorely, had exacted a promise on her deathbed that Doreen should be brought up in her mother's faith, and a Papist Doreen should be, he swore, at least till she arrived at an age to settle the question for herself. He would be glad though, he continued, seeing with pain how shocked my lady looked, if in her sisterly affection she would lay prejudice aside and help to rear the child; for the sharpest of men, as all the world knows, is no better than a fool in dealing with babies. And so it befell that the Countess of Glandore, the haughty chatelaine who scoffed at 'mummeries' and worshipped King William as champion of the Faith, nourished a scorpion in her bosom for Arthur's sake, and permitted the little scarlet lady to consort with her own lads. My lady's hatred of the national creed had a more bitter cause even than class prejudice. She had a private and absorbing reason for it, more feminine than theological.