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.”

“But pardon, Signorino,” she insisted; “if they are not
Catholics, they must be Freemasons or Jews.  They cannot be
Christians.  Christian—­Catholic:  it is the same.  All
Christians are Catholics.”

“Tu quoque!” he cried.  “You regard the terms as interchangeable?  I ’ve heard the identical sentiment similarly enunciated by another.  Do I look like a Freemason?”

She bent her sharp old eyes upon him studiously for a moment.  Then she shook her head.

“No,” she answered slowly.  “I do not think that the Signorino looks like a Freemason.”

“A Jew, then?”

“Mache!  A Jew?  The Signorino!” She shrugged derision.

“And yet I’m what they call a Protestant,” he said.

“No,” said she.

“Yes,” said he.  “I refer you to my sponsors in baptism.  A regular, true blue moderate High Churchman and Tory, British and Protestant to the backbone, with ’Frustrate their Popish tricks’ writ large all over me.  You have never by any chance married a Protestant yourself?” he asked.

“No, Signorino.  I have never married any one.  But it was not for the lack of occasions.  Twenty, thirty young men courted me when I was a girl.  But—­mica!—­I would not look at them.  When men are young they are too unsteady for husbands; when they are old they have the rheumatism.”