'Depend upon it, they promised him something--some prince-bishopric, perhaps. Else why on earth could a man go over! It's out of the course of nature!' Lancelot tried in vain to make him understand that a man might sacrifice everything to conscience, and actually give up all worldly weal for what he thought right. The banker turned on him with angry resignation-- 'Very well--I suppose he's done right then! I suppose you'll go next! Take up a false religion, and give up everything for it! Why, then, he must be honest; and if he's honest, he's in the right; and I suppose I'd better go too!' Lancelot argued: but in vain. The idea of disinterested sacrifice was so utterly foreign to the good man's own creed and practice, that he could but see one pair of alternatives. 'Either he is a good man, or he's a hypocrite. Either he's right, or he's gone over for some vile selfish end; and what can that be but money?' Lancelot gently hinted that there might be other selfish ends besides pecuniary ones--saving one's soul, for instance. 'Why, if he wants to save his soul, he's right. What ought we all to do, but try to save our souls? I tell you there's some sinister reason. They've told him that they expect to convert England--I should like to see them do it!--and that he'll be made a bishop. Don't argue with me, or you'll drive me mad. I know those Jesuits!' And as soon as he began upon the Jesuits, Lancelot prudently held his tongue. The good man had worked himself up into a perfect frenzy of terror and suspicion about them. He suspected concealed Jesuits among his footmen and his housemaids; Jesuits in his counting-house, Jesuits in his duns. . . . 'Hang it, sir! how do I know that there ain't a Jesuit listening to us now behind the curtain?' 'I'll go and look,' quoth Lancelot, and suited the action to the word. 'Well, if there ain't there might be. They're everywhere, I tell you. That vicar of Whitford was a Jesuit. I was sure of it all along; but the man seemed so pious; and certainly he did my poor dear boy a deal of good. But he ruined you, you know. And I'm convinced--no, don't contradict me; I tell you, I won't stand it-- I'm convinced that this whole mess of mine is a plot of those rascals;--I'm as certain of it as if they'd told me!' 'For what end?' 'How the deuce can I tell? Am I a Jesuit, to understand their sneaking, underhand--pah! I'm sick of life! Nothing but rogues wherever one turns!' And then Lancelot used to try to persuade him to take poor Luke back again. But vague terror had steeled his heart. 'What! Why, he'd convert us all! He'd convert his sisters! He'd bring his priests in here, or his nuns disguised as ladies' maids, and we should all go over, every one of us, like a set of nine- pins!' 'You seem to think Protestantism a rather shaky cause, if it is so easy to be upset.'