"I dare not," answered Bridgenorth, "lay even the ninety-ninth part of
a grain of incense upon an altar erected to Satan."

"How, sir!" said the lady; "do you bring Satan into comparison with
our master King Charles, and with my noble lord and husband?"

"Pardon me, madam," answered Bridgenorth, "I have no such thoughts--
indeed they would ill become me. I do wish the King's health and Sir
Geoffrey's devoutly, and I will pray for both. But I see not what good
it should do their health if I should prejudice my own by quaffing
pledges out of quart flagons."

"Since we cannot agree upon this matter," said Lady Peveril, "we must
find some resource by which to offend those of neither party. Suppose
you winked at our friends drinking these pledges, and we should
connive at your sitting still?"

But neither would this composition satisfy Bridgenorth, who was of
opinion, as he expressed himself, that it would be holding a candle to
Beelzebub. In fact, his temper, naturally stubborn, was at present
rendered much more so by a previous conference with his preacher, who,
though a very good man in the main, was particularly and illiberally
tenacious of the petty distinctions which his sect adopted; and while
he thought with considerable apprehension on the accession of power
which Popery, Prelacy, and Peveril of the Peak, were like to acquire
by the late Revolution, became naturally anxious to put his flock on
their guard, and prevent their being kidnapped by the wolf. He
disliked extremely that Major Bridgenorth, indisputably the head of
the Presbyterian interest in that neighbourhood, should have given his
only daughter to be, as he termed it, nursed by a Canaanitish woman;