His tall spare figure assumed a commanding grandeur and authority,—­ his pale face flushed and his eyes sparkled—­he looked inspired—­ superb—­a very apostle burning with righteous indignation.  His words seemed to have the effect of an electric shock on the Abbe,—­he started as though stung by the lash of a whip, and drew himself up haughtily . . . then meeting the Cardinal’s straight glance, his head drooped, and he stood mute and rigid.  Leigh, though conscious of embarrassment as the witness of a strong reproof administered by one dignitary of the Church to another, yet felt deeply interested in the scene,—­Angela shrank back trembling,—­and for a few moments which, though so brief, seemed painfully long, there was a dead silence.  Then Verginaud spoke in low stifled accents.

“You are perfectly right, Monseigneur!  It is shame to me!—­and to the priesthood of France!  I am no worse than the rest of my class,—­ but I am certainly no better!  Your reproach is grand,—­and just!  I accept it, and ask your pardon!”

He bent one knee, touched the Cardinal’s ring with his lips, and then without another word turned and left the room.  The Cardinal gazed after his retreating figure like a man in a dream, then he said gently,

“Angela, go after him!—­Call him back!—­”

But it was too late.  Vergniaud had left the house before Angela could overtake him.  She came back hurriedly to say so, with a pale face and troubled look.  Her uncle patted her kindly on the shoulder.

“Well, well!—­It will not hurt him to have seen me angry,” he said smiling, “Anger in a just cause is permitted.  I seem to have frightened you, Angela?  Of a truth I have rather frightened myself!  There, we will not talk any more of the evils of Paris.  Mr. Leigh perhaps thinks me an intolerant Christian?”

“On the contrary I think you are one of the few ‘faithful’ that I have ever met,” said Leigh, “Of course I am out of it in a way, because I do not belong to the Roman Church.  I am supposed—­I say ‘supposed’ advisedly—­to be a Church of England man, or to put it more comprehensively, a Protestant, and I certainly am so much of the latter that I protest against all our systems altogether!”

“Is that quite just?” asked Bonpre gently.

“Perhaps not!—­but what is one to do?  I am not alone in my ideas!  One of our English bishops has been latterly deploring the fact that out of a thousand lads in a certain parish nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine of them never go to church!  Well, what can you expect?  I do not blame those nine-hundred and-ninety-nine at all.  I am one with them. I never go to church.”

“Why?”