appeared
to Quisante to be at once a fine conception and a notable opportunity;
between these two aspects he did not, as Dick Benyon had foreseen, draw
any very rigid line. To make the Church again a power with the masses;
this done, to persuade the masses to use their power under the leadership
of the Church; this done, to harmonise unimpaired liberty of conscience
with a whole-hearted devotion to truth, and to devote both to ends which
should unite the maximum of zeal for the Community with the minimum of
political innovation, were aims which, if they were nothing else, might
at least claim to be worthy to exercise the intellect of superior men and
to inspire the eloquence of orators. That a set of people on the other
side was professing to do the same things, with totally different and
utterly wrong notions of the results to be obtained, afforded the whet of
antagonism, and let in dialectic and partisanship as a seasoning to
relieve the high severity of the main topic. Quisante's personal
relations with the Church had never been intimate; he was perhaps the
better able to lay hold of its romantic and picturesque aspect. The Dean,
for instance, was hampered and at times discouraged by a knowledge of
details. Dick Benyon had to struggle against the family point of view as
regarded the family livings. Quisante came almost as a stranger, ready to
be impressed, to take what suited him, to form the desired opinion and no
other; if a legal metaphor may be allowed, to master what was in his
brief, to use that to the full, and to know nothing to the contrary. The
Empire was very well, but it was a crowded field; the new subject had
advantages all its own and especial allurements.

Yet Miss Quisante laughed, as a man's relatives often will although the
rest of the world is unimpeachably grave. For any person engaged in
getting a complete view of Alexander Quisante it was well to turn from
Dick Benyon to Aunt Maria. So May Gaston found when she took the old
woman at her word and went to see her, unaccompanied by Lady Attlebridge.
She listened awhile to her caustic talk and then charged her roundly with
not doing justice to her nephew.

"Sandro's caught you too, has he?" was her hostess's immediate retort.

"No, he hasn't caught me, as you call it, Miss Quisante," said May,
smiling. "I dislike a great deal in him." She paused before adding,
"What's more, I've told him so."

"He'll be very pleased at that."

"He didn't seem