Father Barham went away certainly disgusted; and yet not altogether disheartened.  The man had not declared that he was not a Roman Catholic.  He had shown himself to be a brute.  He had blasphemed and cursed.  He had been outrageously uncivil to a man whom he must have known to be a minister of God.  He had manifested himself to this priest, who had been born an English gentleman, as being no gentleman.  But, not the less might he be a good Catholic,—­or good enough at any rate to be influential on the right side.  To his eyes Melmotte, with all his insolent vulgarity, was infinitely a more hopeful man than Roger Carbury.  ‘He insulted me,’ said Father Barham to a brother religionist that evening within the cloisters of St Fabricius.

‘Did he intend...