As rarely happened, they had conversed on religion.

Noemi clung blindly to her own religion, and disliked discussions.

Notwithstanding her tenderness for Maria, and her affectionate respect for Giovanni, she feared she should lean more towards the scepticism of Jeanne than towards the liberal and progressive Catholicism of the Selvas, if she stopped to examine the reasons and nature of her own belief.

This Catholicism appeared to her a hybrid thing, and she had perhaps learned from Jeanne to consider it such; for Jeanne, in moments of nervous irritability, defended her own scepticism with acrimony against that faith which, because it shone with spirituality and truth, might prove formidable to her.

Noemi was always suspicious, not of her sister, but of Giovanni, fearing he would attempt to convert her, and her suspicion had that day been apparent when, discussing the confessional, she had several times answered him very sharply.