"
Noemi pursed her lips and wrinkled her nose.
"What nonsense," she said.
Carlino continued, saying he did not yet know how, but in some way or
another the brunette would become the penitent of the old priest. Noemi
protested, laughing. How? The girl could not be herself. A heretic go to
Confession? Carlino shrugged his shoulders, One Comedy of Errors more
or less, what did it matter? Protestantism and Roman Catholicisnt were,
after all, much the same thing. The priest would then regain his old
faith through contact with the simple, steadfast belief of the girl.
Here Carlino interrupted his story, avowing, in parenthesis, that he
really did not know what kind of belief Noemi held. She flushed,
and replied that she was a Protestant. Protestant, certainly; but a
Protestant pure and simple? Noemi lost her patience. "I am a Protestant,
that is enough," she exclaimed; "and you need not trouble yourself about
my faith."
Noemi was, in fact, true to her own faith, not so much from conviction
as from her reverent affection for the memory of her parents; and in her
heart she had disapproved of her sister's conversion.
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