By the way, I assuem Marian to be English... but Ideas crossed borders even more than today (thanks to the fact of nationalism still being a rather fresh idea in 19th century and all this... look up the concepts of magic and alchemy and how they were transfered to the English.)

(then again... Cross' phrases in that sense and context never came across me during my studies... probably Hoshino looked up a bit and then run away with the wikipedia knowledge she got. ^^°)