from her presence.
And I thought, you did not wish to be exiled from her presence, You
would stake, then, this great privilege, the privilege of seeing her, of
knowing her, upon a. chance that has a thousand to one against it. You
make light of the conventional barriers--but the principal barrier of
them all, you are forgetting. She is a Roman Catholic, and a devout one.
Marry a Protestant? She would as soon think of marrying a Paynim Turk."

In the end, no doubt, a kind of exhaustion followed upon his excitement.
Questions and answers suspended themselves; and he could only look up
towards Ventirose, and dumbly wish that he was there. The distance was
so trifling--in five minutes he could traverse it--the law seemed absurd
and arbitrary, which condemned him to sit apart, free only to look and
wish.

It was in this condition of mind that Marietta found him, when she came
to announce dinner.

Peter gave himself a shake. The sight of the brown old woman, with
her homely, friendly face, brought him back to small things, to actual
things; and that, if it was n't a comfort, was, at any rate, a relief.

"Dinner?" he questioned. "Do peris at the gates of Eden DINE?"

"The soup is on the table," said Marietta.

He rose, casting a last glance towards the castle.

Towers and battlements...
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighbouring eyes."

He repeated the lines in an undertone, and went in to dinner. And then
the restorative spirit of nonsense descended upon him.

"Marietta," he asked, "what is your attitude towards the question of
mixed marriages?"

Marietta wrinkled her brow.

"Mixed marriages? What is that, Signorino?"

"Marriages between Catholics and Protestants," he explained.

"Protestants?" Her brow was still a network. "What things are they?"

"They are things--or perhaps it would be less invidious to say
people--who are not Catholics--who repudiate Catholicism as a deadly and
soul-destroying error."

"Jews?" asked Marietta.

"No--not exactly. They are generally classified as Christians. But
they protest, you know. Protesto, protestare, verb, active, first
conjugation. 'Mi pare che la donna protesta troppo,' as the poet
sings. They're Christians, but they protest against the Pope and the
Pretender."

"The Signorino means Freemasons," said Marietta.

"No, he does n't," said Peter. "He means Protestants."