Her desertion of the parish church was observed, and of course
nobody was surprised that Miss Radcliffe had turned Papist. The old
Radcliffes were all Papists; there was Popery in the blood, and it
came out like the gout, missing a couple of generations. Then again
there was the scar, and Miss Radcliffe would never be married. One
of the neighbours who suggested the scar and maidenhood as a
sufficient reason for apostasy was a retired mill-owner, who was a
Wesleyan Methodist when he was in business in Manchester, but had
become ostentatiously Anglican when he retired into the country.
The village blacksmith, whose ancestors had worked at the same forge
since the days of Queen Elizabeth, was a fearless gentleman, and
hated the mill-owner as an upstart. He therefore made reply that
'other people changed their religion because they wanted to be
respectable and get folk like the Radcliffes to visit them--which
they won't,' the last words being spoken with emphasis and scorn.

Mr. Radcliffe was much disturbed. To him Roman Catholicism was
superstition, and he wondered how any rational person could submit
to it. To be sure he assented every week to supernatural history
and doctrines presented to him in his own parish church, but to
these he was accustomed, and his reason, acute as it was, made no
objection. There was another cause for his distress. His only
sister, whom he tenderly loved, had become a foreign nun and was
lost to him for ever. His life was bound up with his child, and he
dreaded intervention. It is all very well to say that religious
differences need not be a bar to friendship. This is one of the
commonplaces of people who understand neither friendship nor
religion. When Kate and he went for their long walks together, they
would no longer see the same hills; and there would always be