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  LONDON PRIDE

  OR

  WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNGER

  BY

  M.E. BRADDON

  _Author of "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "VIXEN," "ISHMAEL," ETC._

  1896

  CONTENTS

  _CHAPTER I._ A HARBOUR FROM THE STORM

  _CHAPTER II._ WITHIN CONVENT WALLS

  _CHAPTER III._ LETTERS FROM HOME

  _CHAPTER IV._ THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

  _CHAPTER V._ A MINISTERING ANGEL

  _CHAPTER VI._ BETWEEN LONDON AND OXFORD

  _CHAPTER VII._ AT THE TOP OF THE FASHION

  _CHAPTER VIII._ SUPERIOR TO FASHION

  _CHAPTER IX._ IN A PURITAN HOUSE

  _CHAPTER X._ THE PRIEST'S HOLE

  _CHAPTER XL._ LIGHTER THAN VANITY

  _CHAPTER XII._ LADY FAREHAM'S DAY

  _CHAPTER XIII._ THE SAGE OF SAYES COURT

  _CHAPTER XIV._ THE MILLBANK GHOST

  _CHAPTER XV._ FALCON AND DOVE

  _CHAPTER XVI._ WHICH WAS THE FIERCER FIRE?

  _CHAPTER XVII._ THE MOTIVE--MURDER

  _CHAPTER XVIII._ REVELATIONS

  _CHAPTER XIX._ DIDO

  _CHAPTER XX._ PHILASTER

  _CHAPTER XXI._ GOOD-BYE, LONDON

  _CHAPTER XXII._ AT THE MANOR MOAT

  _CHAPTER XXIII._ PATIENT, NOT PASSIONATE

  _CHAPTER XXIV._ "QUITE OUT OF FASHION"

  _CHAPTER XXV._ HIGH STAKES

  _CHAPTER XXVI._ IN THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH

  _CHAPTER XXVII._ BRINGERS OF SUNSHINE

  _CHAPTER XXVIII._ IN A DEAD CALM

  CHAPTER I.

  A HARBOUR FROM THE STORM.

  The wind howled across the level fields, and flying showers of sleetrattled against the old leathern coach as it drove through the thickeningdusk. A bitter winter, this year of the Royal tragedy.

  A rainy summer, and a mild rainy autumn had been followed by the hardestfrost this generation had ever known. The Thames was frozen over, andtempestuous winds had shaken the ships in the Pool, and the steep gableends and tall chimney-stacks on London Bridge. A never-to-be-forgottenwinter, which had witnessed the martyrdom of England's King, and the exileof her chief nobility, while a rabble Parliament rode roughshod over acowed people. Gloom and sour visages prevailed, the maypoles were down, theplay-houses were closed, the bear-gardens were empty, the cock-pits weredesolate; and a saddened population, impoverished and depressed by thesacrifices that had been exacted and the tyranny that had been exercisedin the name of Liberty, were ground under the iron heel of Cromwell'sred-coats.

  The pitiless journey from London to Louvain, a journey of many daysand nights, prolonged by accident and difficulty, had been spun out touttermost tedium for those two in the heavily moving old leathern coach.Who and what were they, these wearied travellers, journeying togethersilently towards a destination which promised but little of pleasure orluxury by way of welcome--a destination which meant severance for thosetwo?

  One was Sir John Kirkland, of the Manor Moat, Bucks, a notorious Malignant,a grey-bearded cavalier, aged by trouble and hard fighting; a soldier andservant who had sacrificed himself and his fortune for the King, and mustneeds begin the world anew now that his master was murdered, his own goodsconfiscated, the old family mansion, the house in which his parents diedand his children were born, emptied of all its valuables, and left to thecare of servants, and his master's son a wanderer in a foreign land, withlittle hope of ever winning back crown and sceptre.

  Sadness was the dominant expression of Sir John's stern, strongly markedcountenance, as he sat staring out at the level landscape through theunglazed coach window, staring blankly across those wind-swept Flemishfields where the cattle were clustering in sheltered corners, a monotonousexpanse, crossed by ice-bound dykes that looked black as ink, save wherethe last rays of the setting sun touched their iron hue with blood-redsplashes. Pollard willows indicated the edge of one field, gaunt poplarsmarked the boundary of another, alike leafless and unbeautiful, standingdarkly out against the dim grey sky. Night was hastening towards thetravellers, narrowing and blotting out that level landscape, field, dyke,and leafless wood.

  Sir John put his head out of the coach window, and looked anxiously alongthe straight road, peering through the shades of evening in the hope ofseeing the crocketed spires and fair cupolas of Louvain in the distance.But he could see nothing save a waste of level pastures and the gatheringdarkness. Not a light anywhere, not a sign of human habitation.

  Useless to gaze any longer into the impenetrable night. The traveller leantback into a corner of the carriage with folded arms, and, with a deep sigh,composed himself for slumber. He had slept but little for the last week.The passage from Harwich to Ostend in a fishing-smack had been a periloustransit, prolonged by adverse winds. Sleep had been impossible on boardthat wretched craft; and the land journey had been fraught with vexationand delays of all kinds--stupidity of postillions, dearth of horseflesh,badness of the roads--all things that can vex and hinder.

  Sir John's travelling companion, a small child in a cloak and hood, creptcloser to him in the darkness, nestled up against his elbow, and pushed herlittle cold hand into his leathern glove.

  "You are crying again, father," she said, full of pity. "You were cryinglast night. Do you always cry when it grows dark?"

  "It does not become a man to shed tears in the daylight, little maid," herfather answered gently.

  "Is it for the poor King you are crying--the King those wicked menmurdered?"

  "Ay, Angela, for the King; and for the Queen and her fatherless childrenstill more than for the King, for he has crowned himself with a crown ofglory, the diadem of martyrs, and is resting from labour and sorrow, torise victorious at the great day, when his enemies and his murderers shallstand ashamed before him. I weep for that once so lovely lady--widowed,discrowned, needy, desolate--a beggar in the land where her father was agreat king. A hard fate, Angela, father and husband both murdered."

  "Was the Queen's father murdered too?" asked the silver-sweet voice out ofdarkness, a pretty piping note like the song of a bird.

  "Yes, love."

  "Did Bradshaw murder him?"

  "No, dearest, 'twas in France he was slain--in Paris; stabbed to death by amadman."

  "And was the Queen sorry?"

  "Ay, sweetheart, she has drained the cup of sorrow. She was but a childwhen her father died. She can but dimly remember that dreadful day. And nowshe sits, banished and widowed, to hear of her husband's martyrdom; herelder sons wanderers, her young daughter a prisoner."

  "Poor Queen!" piped the small sweet voice, "I am so sorry for her."

  Little had she ever known but sorrow, this child of the Great Rebellion,born in the old Buckinghamshire manor house, while her father was atFalmouth with the Prince--born in the midst of civil war, a stormy petrel,bringing no message of peace from those unknown skies whence she came, aharbinger of woe. Infant eyes love bright colours. This baby's eyes lookedupon a house hung with black. Her mother died before the child was afortnight old. They had christened her Angela. "Angel of Death," said thefather, when the news of his loss reached him, after the lapse of manydays. His fair young wife's coffin was in the family vault under the parishchurch of St. Nicholas in the Vale, before he knew that he had lost her.

  There was an elder daughter, Hyacinth, seven years the senior, who had beensent across the Channel in the care of an old servant at the beginning ofthe troubles between King and Parliament.

  She had been placed in the charge of her maternal grandmother, the Marquisede Montrond, who had taken ship for C
alais when the Court left London,leaving her royal mistress to weather the storm. A lady who had wealth andprestige in her own country, who had been a famous beauty when Richelieuwas in power, and who had been admired by that serious and sober monarch,Louis the Thirteenth, could scarcely be expected to put up with the shiftsand shortcomings of an Oxford lodging-house, with the ever-present fear offinding herself in a town besieged by Lord Essex and the rebel army.

  With Madame de Montrond, Hyacinth had been reared, partly in a mediaevalmansion, with a portcullis and four squat towers, near the Chateaud'Arques, and partly in Paris, where the lady had a fine house in theMarais. The sisters had never looked upon each other's faces, Angela havingentered upon the troubled scene after Hyacinth had been carried across theChannel to her grandmother. And now the father was racked with anxiety lestevil should befall that elder daughter in the war between Mazarin and theParliament, which was reported to rage with increasing fury.

  Angela's awakening reason became conscious of a world where all was fearand sadness. The stories she heard in her childhood were stories of thatfierce war which was reaching its disastrous close while she was in hercradle. She was told of the happy peaceful England of old, before darknessand confusion gathered over the land; before the hearts of the people wereset against their King by a wicked and rebellious Parliament.

  She heard of battles lost by the King and his partisans; cities besiegedand taken; a flash of victory followed by humiliating reverses; the King'sparty always at a disadvantage; and hence the falling away of the feebleand the false, the treachery of those who had seemed friends, the impotenceof the faithful.

  Angela heard so often and so much of these things--from old Lady Kirkland,her grandmother, and from the grey-haired servants at the manor--that shegrew to understand them with a comprehension seemingly far beyond hertender years. But a child so reared is inevitably older than her years.This little one had never known childish pleasures or play, childishcompanions or childish fancies.

  She roamed about the spacious gardens, full of saddest thoughts, burdenedwith all the cares that weighed down that kingly head yonder; or she stoodbefore the pictured face of the monarch with clasped hands and tearfuleyes, looking up at him with the adoring compassion of a child prone tohero-worship--thinking of him already as saint and martyr--whose martyrdomwas not yet consummated in blood.

  King Charles had presented his faithful servant, Sir John Kirkland, with ahalf-length replica of one of his Vandyke portraits, a beautiful head, witha strange inward look--that look of isolation and aloofness which we whoknow his story take for a prophecy of doom--which the sculptor Bernini hadremarked, when he modelled the royal head for marble. The picture hung inthe place of honour in the long narrow gallery at the Manor Moat, withtrophies of Flodden and Zutphen arranged against the blackened oakpanelling above it. The Kirklands had been a race of soldiers since thedays of Edward III. The house was full of war-like decorations--tatteredcolours, old armour, memorials of fighting Kirklands who had long beendust.

  There came an evil day when the rabble rout of Cromwell's crop-hairedsoldiery burst into the manor house to pillage and destroy, carrying offcurios and relics that were the gradual accumulation of a century and ahalf of peaceful occupation.

  The old Dowager's grey hairs had barely saved her from outrage on thatbitter day. It was only her utter helplessness and afflicted condition thatprevailed upon the Parliamentary captain, and prevented him from carryingout his design, which was to haul her off to one of those London prisons atthat time so gorged with Royalist captives that the devilish ingenuity ofthe Parliament had devised floating gaols on the Thames, where persons ofquality and character were herded together below decks, to the loss ofhealth, and even of life.

  Happily for old Lady Kirkland, she was too lame to walk, and her enemieshad no horse or carriage in which to convey her; so she was left at peacein her son's plundered mansion, whence all that was valuable and easilyportable was carried away by the Roundheads. Silver plate and family platehad been sacrificed to the King's necessities.

  The pictures, not being either portable or readily convertible into cash,had remained on the old panelled walls.

  Angela used to go from the King's picture to her father's. Sir John's wasa more rugged face than the Stuart's, with a harder expression; but thechild's heart went out to the image of the father she had never seen sincethe dawn of consciousness. He had made a hurried journey to that quietBuckinghamshire valley soon after her birth--had looked at the baby in hercradle, and then had gone down into the vault where his young wife waslying, and had stayed for more than an hour in cold and darkness alone withhis dead. That lovely French wife had been his junior by more than twentyyears, and he had loved her passionately--had loved her and left her forduty's sake. No Kirkland had ever faltered in his fidelity to crown andking. This John Kirkland had sacrificed all things, and, alone with hisbeloved dead in the darkness of that narrow charnel house, it seemed tohim that there was nothing left for him except to cleave to those fallenfortunes and patiently await the issue.

  He had fought in many battles and had escaped with a few scars; and he wascarrying his daughter to Louvain, intending to place her in the charge ofher great-aunt, Madame de Montrond's half sister, who was head of a conventin that city, a safe and pious shelter, where the child might be reared inher mother's faith.

  Lady Kirkland, the only daughter of the Marquise de Montrond, one of QueenHenrietta Maria's ladies-in-waiting, had been a papist, and, although SirJohn had adhered steadfastly to the principles of the Reformed Church,he had promised his bride, and the Marquise, her mother, that if theirnuptials were blessed with offspring, their children should be educatedin the Roman faith--a promise difficult of performance in a land where astormy tide ran high against Rome, and where Popery was a scarlet spectrethat alarmed the ignorant and maddened the bigoted. And now, duly providedwith a safe conduct from the regicide, Bradshaw, he was journeying to thecity where he was to part with his daughter for an indefinite period. Hehad seen but little of her, and yet it seemed as hard to part thus as ifshe had prattled at his knees and nestled in his arms every day of heryoung life.

  At last across the distance, against the wind-driven clouds of that stormywinter sky, John Kirkland saw the lights of the city--not many lights orbrilliant of their kind, but a glimmer here and there--and behind theglimmer the dark bulk of masonry, roofs, steeples, watch-towers, bridges.

  The carriage stopped at one of the gates of the city, and there werequestions asked and answered, and papers shown, but there was no obstacleto the entrance of the travellers. The name of the Ursuline Convent actedlike a charm, for Louvain was papist to the core in these days of Spanishdominion. It had been a city of refuge nearly a hundred years ago for allthat was truest and bravest and noblest among English Roman Catholics, inthe cruel days of Queen Elizabeth, and Englishmen had become the leadingspirits of the University there, and had attracted the youth of RomanistEngland to the sober old Flemish town, before the establishment of Dr.Allan's rival seminary at Douai, Sir John could have found no safer havenfor his little ewe lamb.

  The tired horses blundered heavily along the stony streets, and crossedmore than one bridge. The town seemed pervaded by water, a deep narrowstream like a canal, on which the houses looked, as if in feeble mockery ofVenice--houses with steep crow-step gables, some of them richly decorated;narrow windows for the most part dark, but with here and there the yellowlight of lamp or candle.

  The convent faced a broad open square, and had a large walled garden inits rear. The coach stopped in front of a handsome doorway, and after thetravellers had been scrutinised and interrogated by the portress through anopening in the door, they were admitted into a spacious hall, paved withblack and white marble, and adorned with a statue of the Virgin Mother, andthence to a parlour dimly lighted by a small oil lamp, where they waitedfor about ten minutes, the little girl shivering with cold, before theSuperior appeared.

  She was a tall woman, advanced in years
, with a handsome, but melancholycountenance. She greeted the cavalier as a familiar friend.

  "Welcome to Flanders!" she said. "You have fled from that accursed countrywhere our Church is despised and persecuted----"

  "Nay, reverend kinswoman, I have fled but to go back again as fast ashorses and sails can carry me. While the fortunes of my King are at stake,my place is in England, or it may be in Scotland, where there are stillthose who are ready to fight to the death in the royal cause. But I havebrought this little one for shelter and safe keeping, and tender usage,trusting in you who are of kin to her as I could trust no one else--and,furthermore, that she may be reared in the faith of her dead mother."

  "Sweet soul!" murmured the nun. "It was well for her to be taken from yourtroubled England to the kingdom of the saints and martyrs."

  "True, reverend mother; yet those blasphemous levellers who call us'Malignants' have dubbed themselves 'Saints.'"

  "Then affairs go no better with you in England, I fear, Sir John?"

  "Nay, madam, they go so ill that they have reached the lowest depth ofinfamy. Hell itself hath seen no spectacle more awful, no murder morebarbarous, no horrider triumph of wickedness, than the crime which wasperpetrated this day se'nnight at Whitehall."

  The nun looked at him wistfully, with clasped hands, as one who halfapprehended his meaning.

  "The King!" she faltered, "still a prisoner?"

  "Ay, reverend lady, but a prisoner in Paradise, where angels are hisguards, and saints and martyrs his companions. He has regained his crown;but it is the crown of martyrdom, the aureole of slaughtered saints.England, our little England that was once so great under the strong ruleof that virgin-queen who made herself the arbiter of Christendom, and thewonder of the world----"

  The pious lady shivered and crossed herself at this praise of the hereticqueen--praise that could only come from a heretic.

  "Our blessed and peaceful England has become a den of thieves, given overto the ravening wolves of rebellion and dissent, the penniless soldiery whowould bring down all men's fortunes to their own level, seize all, eat anddrink all, and trample crown and peerage in the mire. They have slainhim, reverend mother, this impious herd--they gave him the mockery of atrial--just as his Master, Christ, was mocked. They spurned and spat uponhim, even as our Redeemer was spurned; and then, on the Sabbath day, theycried aloud in their conventicles, 'Lord, hast Thou not smelt a sweetsavour of blood?' Ay, these murderers gloried in their crime, braggedof their gory hands, lifted them up towards heaven as a token ofrighteousness!"

  The cavalier was pacing to and fro in the dimness of the convent parlour,with quick, agitated steps, his nostrils quivering, grizzled browsbent over angry eyes, his hand trembling with rage as it clutched hissword-hilt.

  The reverend mother drew Angela to her side, took off the little black silkhood, and laid her hand caressingly on the soft brown hair.

  "Was it Cromwell's work?" she asked.

  "Nay, reverend mother, I doubt whether of his own accord Cromwell wouldhave done this thing. He is a villain, a damnable villain--but he is aglorious villain. The Parliament had made their covenant with the King atNewport--a bargain which gave them all, and left him nothing--save only hisbroken health, grey hairs, and the bare name of King. He would have beenbut a phantom of authority, powerless as the royal spectres Aeneas met inthe under-world. They had got all from him--all save the betrayal of hisfriends. There he budged not, but was firm as rock."

  "'Twas likely he remembered Strafford, and that he prospered no better forhaving flung a faithful dog to the wolves," said the nun.

  "Remembered Strafford? Ay, that memory has been a pillow of thorns throughmany a sleepless night. No, it was not Cromwell who sought the King'sblood--it has been shed with his sanction. The Parliament had got all, andwould have been content; but the faction they had created was too strongfor them. The levellers sent their spokesman--one Pride, an ex-drayman, nowcolonel of horse--to the door of the House of Commons, who arrested themore faithful and moderate members, imposed himself and his rebel crewupon the House, and hurried on that violation of constitutional law, thattravesty of justice, which compelled an anointed King to stand before thelowest of his subjects--the jacks-in-office of a mutinous commonalty--toanswer for having fought in defence of his own inviolable rights."

  "Did they dare condemn their King?"

  "Ah, madam, they found him guilty of high treason, in that he had takenarms against the Parliament. They sentenced their royal master todeath--and seven days ago London saw the spectacle of judicial murder--ablameless King slain by the minion of an armed rabble!"

  "But did the people--the English people--suffer this in silence? The wisestand best of them could surely be assembled in your great city. Did thecitizens of London stand placidly by to see this deed accomplished?"

  "They were like sheep before the shearer. They were dumb. Great God! canI ever forget that sea of white faces under the grey winter sky, or theuniversal groan that went up to heaven when the stroke of the axe soundedon the block, and men knew that the murder of their King was consummated;and when that anointed head with its grey hairs, whitened with sorrow, markyou, not with age, was lifted up, bloody, terrible, and proclaimed the headof a traitor? Ah, reverend mother, ten such moments will age a man by tenyears. Was it not the most portentous tragedy which the earth has everseen since He who was both God and Man died upon Calvary? Other judicialsacrifices have been, but never of a victim as guiltless and as noble. Hadyou but seen the calm beauty of his countenance as he turned it towards thepeople! Oh, my King, my master, my beloved friend, when shall I see thatface in Paradise, with the blood washed from that royal brow, with thesmile of the redeemed upon those lips!"

  He flung himself into a chair, covered his face with those weather-stainedhands, which had broadened by much grasping of sword and pistol, pike andgun, and sobbed aloud, with a fierce passion that convulsed the strongmuscular frame. Of all the King's servants this one had been the moststeadfast, was marked in the black book of the Parliament as a notoriousMalignant. From the raising of the standard on the castle-hill atNottingham--in the sad evening of a tempestuous day, with but scantyattendance, and only evil presages--to the treaty at Newport, and theprison on the low Hampshire coast, this man had been his master's constantcompanion and friend; fighting in every battle, cleaving to King and Princein spite of every opposing influence, carrying letters between fatherand son in the teeth of the enemy, humbling himself as a servant, andperforming menial labours, in those latter days of bitterness and outrage,when all courtly surroundings were denied the fallen monarch.

  And now he mourned his martyred King more bitterly than he would havemourned his own brother.

  The little girl slipped from the reverend mother's lap, and ran across theroom to her father.

  "Don't cry, father!" she murmured, with her own eyes streaming. "It hurtsme to see you."

  "Nay, Angela," he answered, clasping her to his breast. "Forgive me thatI think more of my dead King than of my living daughter. Poor child, thouhast seen nothing but sorrow since thou wert born; a land racked by civilwar; Englishmen changed into devils; a home ravaged and made desolate;threatenings and curses; thy good grandmother's days shortened by sorrowand rough usage. Thou wert born into a house of mourning, and hast seennothing but black since thou hadst eyes to notice the things around thee.Those tender ears should have heard only loving words. But it is over,dearest; and thou hast found a haven within these walls. You will take careof her, will you not, madam, for the sake of the niece you loved?"

  "She shall be the apple of my eye. No evil shall come near her that my careand my prayers can avert. God has been very gracious to our order--in alltroublous times we have been protected. We have many pupils from the bestfamilies of Flanders--and some even from Paris, whence parents are glad toremove their children from the confusion of the time. You need fear nothingwhile this sweet child is with us; and if in years to come she shoulddesire to enter our order----"

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p; "The Lord forbid!" cried the cavalier. "I want her to be a good and piouspapist, madam, like her sweet mother; but never a nun. I look to her as thestaff and comfort of my declining years. Thou wilt not abandon thy father,wilt thou, little one, when thou shalt be tall and strong as a bulrush, andhe shall be bent and gnarled with age, like the old medlar on the lawn atthe Manor? Thou wilt be his rod and staff, wilt thou not, sweetheart?"

  The child flung her arms round his neck and kissed him. It was her onlyanswer, but that mute reply was a vow.

  "Thou wilt stay here till England's troubles are over, Angela, and thatbase herd yonder have been trampled down. Thou wilt be happy here, and wiltmind thy book, and be obedient to those good ladies who will teach thee;and some day, when our country is at peace, I will come back to fetchthee."

  "Soon," murmured the child, "soon, father?"

  "God grant it may be soon, my beloved! It is hard for father and childrento be scattered, as we are scattered; thy sister Hyacinth in Paris, andthou in Flanders, and I in England. Yet it must needs be so for a while!"

  "Why should not Hyacinth come to us and be reared with Angela?" asked thereverend mother.

  "Nay, madam, Hyacinth is well cared for with your sister, Madame deMontrond. She is as dear to her maternal grandmother as this little onehere was to my good mother, whose death last year left us a house ofmourning. Hyacinth will doubtless inherit a considerable portion of Madamede Montrond's wealth, which is not insignificant. She is being brought upin the precincts of the Court."

  "A worldly and a dangerous school for one so young," said the nun, with asigh. "I have heard my father talk of what life was like at the Louvre whenthe Bearnais reigned there in the flower of his manhood, newly master ofParis, flushed with hard-won victory, and but lately reconciled to theChurch."

  "Methinks that great captain's court must have been laxer than that ofQueen Anne and the Cardinal. I have been told that the child-king is beingreared, as it were, in a cloister, so strict are mother and guardian. Myonly fear for Hyacinth is the troubled state of the city, given over tocivil warfare only less virulent than that which has desolated England. Ihear that the Fronde is no war of epigrams and pamphlets, but that men areas earnest and bloodthirsty as they were in the League. I shall go fromhere to Paris to see my first-born before I make my way back to London."

  "I question if you will find her at Paris," said the reverend mother. "Ihad news from a priest in the diocese of the Coadjutor. The Queen-motherleft the city secretly with her chosen favourites in the dead of the nighton the sixth of this month, after having kept the festival of Twelfth Nightin a merry humour with her Court. Even her waiting-women knew nothingof her plans. They went to St. Germain, where they found the chateauunfurnished, and where all the Court had to sleep upon was a few loads ofstraw. Hatred of the Cardinal is growing fiercer every day, and Paris isin a state of siege. The Princes are siding with Mathieu Mole and hisParliament, and the Provincial Parliaments are taking up the quarrel. Godgrant that it may not be in France as it has been with you in your unhappyEngland; but I fear the Spanish Queen and her Italian minister scarce knowthe temper of the French people."

  "Alas, good friend, we have fallen upon evil days, and the spirit of revoltis everywhere; but if there is trouble at the French Court, there is allthe more need that I should make my way thither, be it at St. Germain orat Paris, and so assure myself of my pretty Hyacinth's safety. She was sosweet an infant when my good and faithful steward carried her across thesea to Dieppe. Never shall I forget that sad moment of parting; when thebaby arms were wreathed round my sweet saint's neck; she so soon to becomeagain a mother, so brave and patient in her sorrow at parting with herfirst-born. Ah, sister, there are moments in this life that a man mustneeds remember, even amidst the wreck of his country." He dashed away atear or two, and then turned to his kinswoman with outstretched hands andsaid, "Good night, dear and reverend mother; good night and good-bye. Ishall sleep at the nearest inn, and shall be on the road again at daybreak.Good-bye, my soul's delight"

  He clasped his daughter in his arms, with something of despair in thefervour of his embrace, telling himself, as the soft cheek was pressedagainst his own, how many years might pass ere he would again so clasp thattender form and feel those innocent kisses on his bearded lips. She andthe elder girl were all that were left to him of love and comfort, and theelder sister had been taken from him while she was a little child. He wouldnot have known her had he met her unawares; nor had he ever felt for hersuch a pathetic love as for this guiltless death-angel, this baby whosecoming had ruined his life, whose love was nevertheless the only drop ofsweetness in his cup.

  He plucked himself from that gentle embrace, and walked quickly to thedoor.

  "You will apply to me for whatever money is needed for the child'smaintenance and education," he said, and in the next moment was gone.