ference to the feud that is six centuries old,
the old open ulcer, that makes all rule in this country a struggle, and
all resistance to it a patriotism. Don't you know," asked he, almost
sternly, "that I am a Papist?" "Yes, you told me so."

"And don't you know that my religion is not a mere barrier to
my advancement in many careers of life, but is a social
disqualification--that it is, like the trace of black blood in a
creole, a ban excluding him from intercourse with his better-born
neighbors--that I belong to a class just as much shut out from all the
relations of society as were the Jews in the fifteenth century?"

"I remember that you told me so once, but I own I never fully
comprehended it, nor understood how the question of a man's faith was
to decide his standing in this world, and that, being the equal of those
about you in birth and condition, your religion should stamp you with
inferiority."

"But I did not tell you I was their equal," said Longworth, with a
slow and painful distinctness. "We are _novi homines_ here; a couple of
generations back we were peasants--as poor as anything you could see
out of that window. By hard work and some good luck--of course there was
luck in it--we emerged, and got enough together to live upon, and I was
sent to a costly school, and then to college, that I might start in life
the equal of my fellows. But what avails it all? To hold a station in
life, to mix with the world, to associate with men educated and brought
up like myself, I must quit my own country and live abroad. I know, I
see, you can make nothing of this. It is out and out incomprehensible.
You made a clean sweep of these things with your great Revolution of
'93. Ours is yet to come."

"Per Dio! I 'd not stand it," cried the other, passionately.

"You could n't help it. You must stand it; at least, till such time
as a good many others, equally aggrieved as yourself, resolve to risk
something to change it; and this is remote enough, for there is nothing
that men--I mean educated and cultivated men--are more averse to, than
any open confession of feeling a social disqualification. I may tell it
to you here, as we sit over the fire, but I 'll not go out and proclaim
it, I promise you. These are confessions one keeps for the fireside."

"And will not these people visit you?"

"Nothing less likely."

"Nor you call upon them?"

"Certainly not."

"And will you continue to live within an hour's drive of ea