“The old glutton!” he said; “I should like to put him on a diet of buckwheat and sawdust like his poor peasants for a week, and then see whether he would go on gormandising, with his wars and his buildings, starving his poor.  It is almost enough to make a Whig of a man to see what we might have come to.  How can you bear it, madame?”

“Alas! we are powerless,” said the Vicomtesse.  “A seigneur can do little for his people, but in Anjou we have some privileges, and our peasants are better off than those you have seen, though indeed I grieved much for them when first I came among them from England.”

She was perhaps the less sorry that Paris was nearly emptied of fashionable society since her guest had the less chance of uttering dangerous sentiments before those who might have repeated them, and much as she liked him, she was relieved when letters came from her son undertaking to expedite them on their way provided they made haste to forestall any outbreak of the war in that quarter.

Meantime Naomi and Anne had been drawn much nearer together by a common interest.  The door between their rooms having some imperfection in the latch swung open as they were preparing for bed, and Anne was aware of a sound of sobbing, and saw one of the white-capped, short-petticoated femmes de chambre kneeling at Naomi’s feet, ejaculating, “Oh, take me! take me, mademoiselle!  Madame is an angel of goodness, but I cannot go on living a lie.  I shall do something dreadful.”

“Poor Suzanne! poor Suzanne!” Naomi was answering:  “I will do what I can, I will see if it is possible—­”

They started at the sound of the step, Suzanne rising to her feet in terror, but Naomi, signing to Anne and saying, “It is only Mademoiselle Woodford, a good Protestant, Suzanne.  Go now; I will see what can be done; I know my aunt would like to send a maid with us.”

Then as Suzanne went out with her apron to her eyes, and Anne would have apologised, she said, “Never mind; I must have told you, and asked your help.  Poor Suzanne, she is one of the Rotrous, an old race of Huguenot peasants whom my aunt always protected; she would protect any one, but these people had a special claim because they sheltered our great-grandmother, Lady Walwyn, when she fled after the S. Barthelemi.  When the Edict of Nantes was revoked, the two brothers fled.  I believe she helped them, and they got on board ship, and brought a token to my father; but the old mother was feeble and imbecile, and could not move, and the monks and the dragoons frightened and harassed this poor wench into what they called conforming.  When the mother died, my aunt took Suzanne and taught her, and thought she was converted; and indeed if all Papists were like my aunt it would not be so hard to become one.”

“Oh yes!  I know others like that.”

“But this poor Suzanne, knowing that she only was converted out of terror, has always had an uneasy conscience, and the sight of me has stirred up everything.  She says, though I do not know if it be true, that she was fast drifting into bad habits, when finding my Bible, though it was English and she could not read it, seems to have revived everything, and recalled the teaching of her good old father and pastor, and now she is wild to go to England with us.”