'Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple tyrant--

Was that what you were thinking of?'

Miss Foster had coloured deeply.

'It was the cap--the tiara, isn't it?--that reminded me,' she said faintly;
and then she looked away, as though not wishing to continue the subject.

'She wonders whether I am a Catholic,' thought Mrs. Burgoyne, amused, 'and
whether she has hurt my feelings.'--Aloud, she said--'Are you very, very
Puritan still in your part of America? Excuse me, but I am dreadfully
ignorant about America.'

'We are Methodists in our little town mostly'--said Miss Foster. 'There
is a Presbyterian church--and the best families go there. But my father's
people were always Methodists. My mother was a Universalist.'

Mrs. Burgoyne frowned with perplexity. 'I'm afraid I don't know what that
is?' she said.

'They think everybody will be saved,' said Miss Foster in her shy deep
voice. 'They don't despair of anybody.'

And suddenly Mrs. Burgoyne saw a very soft and tender expression pass
across the girl's grave features, like the rising of an inward light.