"It will come to that some day, perhaps, under the new Act."
"Will you show Mistress Kirkland your house, mother, and your dairy?"
Denzil asked hurriedly. "I know she would like to see one of the neatest
dairies in Oxfordshire."
No request could be more acceptable to Lady Warner, who was a housekeeper
first and a controversialist afterwards. Inclined as she was to rail
against the Church of Rome--partly because she had made up her mind upon
hearsay, chiefly Miltonian, that Roman Catholicism was only another name
for image-worship and martyr-burning, and partly on account of the favour
that had been shown to Papists, as compared with the cruel treatment of
Nonconformists--still there was a charm in Angela's gentle beauty against
which the daughterless matron could not steel her heart. She melted in the
space of a quarter of an hour, while Denzil was encouraging Henriette to
over-eat herself, and trying to persuade Angela to taste this or that
dainty, or reproaching her for taking so little; and by the time the child
had finished her copious meal, Lady Warner was telling herself how dearly
she might have loved this girl for a daughter-in-law, were it not for that
fatal objection of a corrupt and pernicious creed.
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