_My darling old mother was the only person who took my resolve calmly. “As long as you don’t try to convert me,” she said, “and don’t leave incense burning about the house, well—you’re old enough to know your own mind.” She was so amusing while Joan and Mary were marshaling arguments against me. She used to sit playing “Miss Milligan” with a cynical smile, and said, when it was all over and in spite of everyone I had been received, that she had really enjoyed Patience for the first time, as Joan and Mary were too busy to prevent her from cheating._ _How are you and dear old Alan getting on? Of course you can read him this letter. I’ve not written to him because I fancy he won’t be very much interested. Forgive me that I did not take you into my confidence beforehand, but I feared a controversy with a real historian about the continuity of the Anglican church._ _My love to you both at Oxford._ _Your affectionate_ _Maud Ross._ “Great scott!” Michael exclaimed, as he finished the letter. “Alan! could you ever in your wildest dreams have imagined that Mrs. Ross, the most inveterate Whig and Roundhead and Orange bigot, at least whenever she used to argue with me, would have gone over?” “What do you mean?” Alan asked, sinking slowly to earth from his Platonic _ovpavos_. “Gone over where?” “To Rome—become a Roman Catholic.” “Who?” gasped Alan, staggered now more than Michael. “Mrs. Ross—Aunt Maud?” “It’s the most extraordinary thing I ever heard,” said Michael. “She—and Kenneth,” he added rather maliciously, seeing that Alan’s Britannic prejudice was violently aroused. “I’ll read you her letter.” Plato was shut up for the evening before Michael was halfway through, and almost before the last sentence had been read, Alan’s wrath exploded. “It’s all very fine for her to laugh like that at Joan and Mary and Nancy,” he said, coloring hotly. “But they were absolutely right, and Mrs. Ross—I mean Aunt Maud——” “I was afraid you were going to disown the relationship,” Michael laughed. “Aunt Maud is absolutely wrong. Why, my uncle would have been furious. Even if _she_ became a Catholic she had no business to take Kenneth with her. The more I think of it—you know, it really is a bit thick.” “Why do you object?” Michael asked curiously. “I never knew you thought about religion at all, except so far as occasionally to escort your mother politely to Matins, and that was after all to oblige her more than God. Besides, you’re reading Greats, and I always thought that the Greats people in their fourth year abstained from anything like a definite opinion for fear of losing their First.” “I may not have a definite opinion about Christianity,” said Alan. “But Catholicism is ridiculous, anyway—it doesn’t suit English people.”