If, on the other hand, your cause triumph, you will
regain your confiscated estates, while we shall lose ours. So that there
is, I consider, no inequality whatever in their position. The difficulty,
of course, to which I allude is their religion. This is naturally a grave
obstacle, and I fear that my husband will regard it as such, even more
strongly than I do. He is, however, extremely attached to Claire, and
will, I feel sure, when he sees that her happiness is at stake, come
round to my views of the matter.
"There are," she said with a smile, "Catholics and Catholics, just as
there are Protestants and Protestants. I would rather see Claire in her
grave than married to many Catholics I know; but neither you nor Walter
are bigots."
"No, indeed," Captain Davenant said. "We came over to this country when
Catholicism was the religion of all England, and we have maintained the
religious belief of our fathers. I own that what I may call political
Protestantism is hateful to me; but between such Catholicism as mine, and
such Protestantism as yours, I see no such broad distinctions as should
cause us to hate each other."
"That is just my view," Mrs. Conyers agreed. "The differences between the
creeds are political rather than religious, and, in any case, I consider
that when neither of the parties is bigoted, the chances of happiness are
greater in the case where the man is a Catholic and the woman a
Protestant, than in the opposite case.
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