“Will he?” said the Colonel with dignity.
“Yes, my friend, he will, for, like most of your countrymen, you are very wanting in sympathy for the ideas of other people, and it is the great fault which I find with you as a nation.”
“Oh, drop the politics!” cried Belmont impatiently.
“I do not talk politics. What I say is very practical. How can Colonel Cochrane pretend to this priest that he is really interested in his religion when, in effect, there is no religion in the world to him outside some little church in which he has been born and bred? I will say this for the Colonel, that I do not believe he is at all a hypocrite, and I am sure that he could not act well enough to deceive such a man as this priest.”
The Colonel sat with a very stiff back and the blank face of a man who is not quite sure whether he is being complimented or insulted.
“You can do the talking yourself if you like,” said he at last. “I should be very glad to be relieved of it.”
“I think that I am best fitted for it, since I
