Lady Frances shook her head gravely.

“I would sooner see daughter of mine wedded in a lowlier sphere.  My heart shrinks from the thought of seeing any child of ours in the high places of this world.  There be snares and pitfalls abounding there.  We have seen enough to know so much.  There be bitter strivings and envyings and hatreds amongst those of lofty degree.  I would have my children wed with godly and proper men; but I would sooner give them to simple gentlemen of no high-sounding title, than to those whose duties in life will call them to places round about the throne, and will throw them amidst the turmoil of Court life.”

Sir Richard smiled at this unworldly way of looking at things; but the Trevlyns had suffered from being somewhat too well known at Court, and he understood the feeling.

“Truly we live in perilous times,” he said thoughtfully, “and obscurity is often the best security for happiness and well being.  But to return to Kate.  If she is truly forgetting her girlish fancy for her cousin, as I would gladly believe—­and she has not set eyes on him this year and more—­towards whom can her fancy be straying?”

“Thou dost not think she can be pining after her cousin?”

“Nay, surely not,” was the quick and decided answer.  “Had she pined it would have been at the first, when they were separated from each other, and thou knowest how gay and happy she was then.  It is but these past few months that we have seen the change.  Depend upon it, there is some one else.  Would that it might be good Sir Robert Fortescue, who has been here so much of late, and has paid much attention to our saucy Kate!  Wife, what thinkest thou of that?  He is an excellent good man, and would make a stanch and true husband.  He is something old for the child, for sure; but there is no knowing how the errant fancy of maidenhood will stray.”

“I would it might be so,” answered Lady Frances.  “Sir Robert is a good and a godly man, and I would gladly give our restless, capricious Kate to one who could be father and husband in one.  But I confess the thought had not come to me, nor had I thought that he came hither to seek him a wife.”

Sir Richard smiled meaningly.

“Nor had I until of late; but I begin to think that is his object.  He pays more heed to the girls than he did when first he came to visit us, and he has dropped a word here and a hint there, all pointing in one direction.  And dost thou not note that our Kate is often brightest and best when he is by?  I had never thought before that her girlish fancy might have been caught by his gray hair and soldier-like air; yet many stranger things have happened.  Wife, dost thou think it can be?”

“I would it were; it would be well for all.  I will watch and see, and do thou likewise.  I had not thought the child’s fancy thus taken; but if it were so, I should rejoice.  He would be a good husband and a kind one, and our headstrong second daughter will need control as well as love in the battle of life.”