to it:  Patrick recollected that, and now with a softer gloom on his brooding he released her from the burden of his grand charge of unfaithfulness to the truest of lovers, by acknowledging that he was in the presence of the sole rival of his brother.  Glorious girl that she was, her betrayal of Philip had nothing of a woman’s base caprice to make it infamous:  she had sacrificed him to her reading of duty; and that was duty to her father; and the point of duty was in this instance rather a sacred one.  He heard voices murmur that she might be praised.  He remonstrated with them, assuring them, as one who knew, that a woman’s first duty is her duty to her lover; her parents are her second thought.  Her lover, in the consideration of a real soul among the shifty creatures, is her husband; and have we not the word of heaven directing her to submit herself to him who is her husband before all others?  That peerless Adiante had previously erred in the upper sphere where she received her condemnation, but such a sphere is ladder and ladder and silver ladder high above your hair-splitting pates, you children of earth, and it is not for you to act on the verdict in decrying her:  rather ’tis for you to raise hymns of worship to a saint.

Thus did the ingenious Patrick change his ground and gain his argument with the celerity of one who wins a game by playing it without an adversary.  Mr. Adister had sprung a new sense in him on the subject of the renunciation of the religion.  No thought of a possible apostasy had ever occurred to the youth, and as he was aware that the difference of their faith had been the main cause of the division of Adiante and Philip, he could at least consent to think well of her down here, that is, on our flat surface of earth.  Up there, among the immortals, he was compelled to shake his head at her still, and more than sadly in certain moods of exaltation, reprovingly; though she interested him beyond all her sisterhood above, it had to be confessed.

They traversed a banqueting-hall hung with portraits, to two or three of which the master of Earlsfont carelessly pointed, for his guest to be interested in them or not as he might please.  A reception-hall flung folding-doors on a grand drawing-room, where the fires in the grates went through the ceremony of warming nobody, and made a show of keeping the house alive.  A modern steel cuirass, helmet and plume at a corner of the armoury reminded Mr. Adister to say that he had worn the uniform in his day.  He cast an odd look at the old shell containing him when he was a brilliant youth.  Patrick was marched on to Colonel Arthur’s rooms, and to Captain David’s, the sailor.  Their father talked of his two sons.  They appeared to satisfy him.  If that was the case, they could hardly have thrown off their religion.  Already Patrick had a dread of naming the daughter.  An idea struck him that she might be the person who had been guilty of it over there on the Continent.