And whether she accepts you or rejects you, it is better to tell her and to have it over, than to go on forever dangling this way, like the poor cat in the adage. Tell her--put your fate to the touch--hope nothing, fear nothing--and bow to the event.” But even this temperate answer provoked its counter-answer. “The odds are a hundred to one, a thousand to one, that she will not accept you. And if you tell her, and she does not accept you, she will not allow you to see her any more, you will be exiled from her presence. And I thought, you did not wish to be exiled from her presence, You would stake, then, this great privilege, the privilege of seeing her, of knowing her, upon a. chance that has a thousand to one against it. You make light of the conventional barriers--but the principal barrier of them all, you are forgetting. She is a Roman Catholic, and a devout one. Marry a Protestant? She would as soon think of marrying a Paynim Turk.” In the end, no doubt, a kind of exhaustion followed upon his excitement. Questions and answers suspended themselves; and he could only look up towards Ventirose, and dumbly wish that he was there. The distance was so trifling--in five minutes he could traverse it--the law seemed absurd and arbitrary, which condemned him to sit apart, free only to look and wish. It was in this condition of mind that Marietta found him, when she came to announce dinner. Peter gave himself a shake. The sight of the brown old woman, with her homely, friendly face, brought him back to small things, to actual things; and that, if it was n't a comfort, was, at any rate, a relief. “Dinner?” he questioned. “Do peris at the gates of Eden DINE?” “The soup is on the table,” said Marietta. He rose, casting a last glance towards the castle. Towers and battlements... Bosomed high in tufted trees, Where perhaps some beauty lies, The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.” He repeated the lines in an undertone, and went in to dinner. And then the restorative spirit of nonsense descended upon him. “Marietta,” he asked, “what is your attitude towards the question of mixed marriages?” Marietta wrinkled her brow. “Mixed marriages? What is that, Signorino?” “Marriages between Catholics and Protestants,” he explained. “Protestants?” Her brow was still a network. “What things are they?” “They are things--or perhaps it would be less invidious to say people--who are not Catholics--who repudiate Catholicism as a deadly and soul-destroying error.” “Jews?” asked Marietta. “No--not exactly. They are generally classified as Christians. But they protest, you know. Protesto, protestare, verb, active, first conjugation. 'Mi pare che la donna protesta troppo,' as the poet sings. They're Christians, but they protest against the Pope and the Pretender.” “The Signorino means Freemasons,” said Marietta. “No, he does n't,” said Peter. “He means Protestants.”