“Nay, but your village of Acol seems full of queer folk, good Sir Marmaduke,” said Mistress Pyncheon.  “I have heard talk among my servants of a mysterious prince hailed from France, who has lately made one of your cottages his home.”

“Oh! ah! yes!” quoth Sir Marmaduke lightly, “the interesting exile from the Court of King Louis.  I did not know that his fame had reached you, mistress.”

“A French prince?—­in this village?” exclaimed Dame Harrison sharply, “and pray, good Sir Marmaduke, where did you go a-fishing to get such a bite?”

“Nay!” replied Sir Marmaduke with a short laugh, “I had naught to do with his coming; he wandered to Acol from Dover about six months ago it seems, and found refuge in the Lamberts’ cottage, where he has remained ever since.  A queer fellow I believe.  I have only seen him once or twice in my fields ... in the evening, usually ...”

Perhaps there was just a curious note of irritability in Sir Marmaduke’s voice as he spoke of this mysterious inhabitant of the quiet village of Acol; certain it is that the two matchmaking old dames seemed smitten at one and the same time with a sense of grave danger to their schemes.

An exile from France, a prince who hides his identity and his person in a remote Kentish village, and a girl with a highly imaginative temperament like Lady Sue! here was surely a more definite, a more important rival to the pretensions of homely country youths like Sir Timothy Harrison or Squire Pyncheon, than even the student of humble origin whose brother was a blacksmith, whose aunt was a Quakeress, and who wandered about the park of Acol with hollow eyes fixed longingly on the much-courted heiress.

Dame Harrison and Mistress Pyncheon both instinctively turned a scrutinizing gaze on her ladyship.  Neither of them was perhaps ordinarily very observant, but self-interest had made them keen, and it would have been impossible not to note the strange atmosphere which seemed suddenly to pervade the entire personality of the young girl.

There was nothing in her face now expressive of whole-hearted partisanship for an absent friend, such as she had displayed when she felt that young Lambert was being unjustly sneered at; rather was it a kind of entranced and arrested thought, as if her mind, having come in contact with one all-absorbing idea, had ceased to function in any other direction save that one.

Her cheeks no longer glowed, they seemed pale and transparent like those of an ascetic; her lips were slightly parted, her eyes appeared unconscious of everything round her, and gazing at something enchanting beyond that bank of clouds which glimmered, snow-white, through the trees.

“But what in the name of common sense is a French prince doing in Acol village?” ejaculated Dame Harrison in her most strident voice, which had the effect of drawing every one’s attention to herself and to Sir Marmaduke, whom she was thus addressing.