."

"It is a great pity she is poor. I am afraid we are getting poor too.
Father was saying last week that he had been talking with Squire
Beverley. Emily is to have fifteen thousand pounds. Father is feverishly
anxious about you and Emily. Her fortune would be a great thing at
Sandal, and father likes her."

"What is the use of talking about Emily? I have been married to Beatrice
Lanza since last September."

"Such a strange name! Is it a Scotch name?"

"She is an Italian."

"Harry Sandal! What a shame!"

"Don't you think God made Italians as well as Englishmen?"

"That is not the question. God made Indians and negroes and all sorts of
people. But he set the world in races, as he set races in families. He
told the Jews to keep to themselves. He was angry when they intermarried
with others. It always brought harm. What kind of a person is an
Italian? They are papists, I know. The Pope of Rome is an Italian. O
Harry, Harry, Harry! It will kill father and mother. But perhaps, as you
met her in Edinburgh, she is a Protestant. The Scotch are all
Protestants."

"Beatrice is a Roman Catholic, a very strict Roman Catholic. I had to
marry her in a Romish church." He said the words rather defiantly, for
Charlotte's attitude offended him; and he had reached that point when it
was a reckless pleasure to put things at their worst.

"Then I am ashamed of you. The dear old rector! He married father and
mother; he christened and confirmed you; you might be sure, that if you
could not ask him to marry you, you had no business to marry at all."

"You said her face was like an angel's, and that you would love her,
Charlotte."

"Oh, indeed! But I did not think the angel was an Italian angel and a
Roman-Catholic angel. Circumstances alter cases. You, who have been
brought up a good Church-of-England gentleman, to go over to the Pope of
Rome!"

"I have not gone over to the Pope of Rome."

"All the same, Harry; all the same. And you know how father feels about
that. Father would fight for the Church quicker than he would fight for
his own house and land. Why! the Sandals got all of their Millom Estate
for being good Protestants; for standing by the Hanoverian line instead
of those popish Stuarts. Father will think you have committed an act of
treason against both church and state, and he will be ashamed to show
his face among the Dale squires. It is too bad! too bad for any thing!"
and she covered her face, and cried bitterl