d, bending her eyes on her
work.

"Ah, Senora, our faith differs from yours much less than you think.
What is a confessor, but a priest--a minister? The Senor Tremayne is a
confessor, when one of his people shall wish his advice. Where lieth
the difference?"

Blanche was too ignorant to know where it lay.

"I accounted there to be mighty difference," she said, hesitatingly.

"_Valgame los santos_! [The saints defend me!]--but a shade or two of
colour. Hold we not the same creeds as you? Your Book of Common
Prayer--what is it but the translation of ours? We worship the same
God; we honour the same persons, as you. Where, then, is the
difference? Our priests wed not; yours may. We receive the Holy
Eucharist in one kind; you, in both. We are absolved in private, and
make confession thus; you, in public. Be these such mighty
differences?"

If Don Juan had thrown a little less dust in her eyes, perhaps Blanche
might have had sense enough to ask him where the Church of Rome had
found her authority for her half of these differences, since it
certainly was not in Holy Scripture: and also, whether that communion
held such men as Cranmer, Latimer, Calvin, and Luther, in very high
esteem? But the dust was much too thick to allow any stronger reply
from Blanche than a feeble inquiry whether these really were all the
points of difference.

"What other matter offendeth your Grace? Doubtless I can expound the
same."

"Why, I have heard," said Blanche faintly, selecting one of the smaller
charges first, "that the Papists do hold Mary, the blessed Virgin, to
have been without sin."

"Some Catholics have that fantasy," replied Don Juan lightly. "It is
only a few. The Church binds it not on the conscience of any. You take
it--you leave it--as you will."

"Likewise you hold obedience due to the Bishop of Rome, instead of only
unto your own Prince, as with us," objected Blanche, growing a shade
bolder.

"That, again, is but in matters ecclesiastical. In secular matters, I
do assure your Grace, the Pope interfereth not."

Blanche, who had no answers to these subtle explainings away of the
facts, felt as if all her outworks were being taken, one by one.

"Yet," she said, bringing her artillery to bear on a new point, "you
have images in your churches, Don John, and do worship unto them?"

The word worship has changed its meaning since the days of Queen
Elizabeth. To do worship, and to do honour, were then i