She was sitting in an armchair holding the study.  Arthur stopped.

“My dear Arthur, now I understand all.”

Arthur Merlin was confused.  He, perhaps, suspected that his picture of Diana resembled a certain young lady.  But how should Aunt Winnifred know it, who, as he supposed, had never seen her?  Besides, he felt it was a disagreeable thing, when he was and had been in love with a young lady for a long time, to have his aunt say that she understood all about it.  How could she understand all about it?  What right has any body to say that she understands all about it?  He asked himself the petulant question because he was very sure that he himself did not by any means understand all about it.

“What do you understand, Aunt Winnifred?” demanded Arthur, in a resolute and defiant tone, as if he were fully prepared to deny every thing he was about to hear.

“Yes, yes,” continued Aunt Winnifred, musingly, and in a tone of profound sadness, as she still held and contemplated the picture—­“yes; yes!  I see, I see!”

Arthur was quite vexed.

“Now really my dear aunt,” said he, remonstratingly, “you must be aware that it is not becoming in a woman like you to go on in this way.  You ought to explain what you mean,” he added, decidedly.

“Well, my poor boy, the hotter you get the surer I am.  Don’t you see?”

Mr. Merlin did not seem to be in the least pacified by this reply.  It was, therefore, in an indignant tone that he answered: 

“Aunt Winnifred, it is not kind in you to come up here and make me lose my time and temper, while you sit there coolly and talk in infernal parables!”

“Infernal parables!” cried the lady, in a tone of surprise and horror.

“Oh, Arthur, Arthur! that comes of not going to church.  Infernal parables!  My soul and body, what an awful idea!”

The painter smiled.  The contest was too utterly futile.  He went slowly back to his easel, and, after a few soothing puffs, began again to rub his colors upon the pallet.  He was humming carelessly once more, and putting his brush to the canvas before him, when his aunt remarked,

“There, Arthur! now that you are reasonable, I’ll tell you what I meant.”

The artist looked over his shoulder and laughed.

“Go on, dear aunt.”

“I understand now why you don’t go to our church.”

It was a remark so totally unexpected that Arthur stopped short and turned quite round.

“What do you mean, Aunt Winnifred?”

“I mean,” said she, holding up the study as if to overwhelm him with resistless proof, “I mean, Arthur—­and I could cry as I say it—­that you are a Roman Catholic!”

Aunt Winnifred, who was an exemplary member of the Dutch Reformed Church, or, as Arthur gayly called her to her face, a Dutch Deformed Woman, was too simple and sincere in her religious faith to tolerate with equanimity the thought that any one of the name of Merlin should be domiciled in the House of Sin, as she poetically described the Church of Rome.