’And Landry, father?  I had rather Landry went than Eustacie.  And Follet, dear father, pray take him.’

After M. de Ribaumont’s grave confidence to his son and heir, he was a little scandalized at the comparative value that the boy’s voice indicated for wife, foster-brother, and pony, and therefore received it in perfect silence, which silence continued until they reached the chateau, where the lady met them at the door with a burst of exclamations.

’Ah, there you are, safe, my dear Baron.  I have been in despair.  Here were the Count and his brother come to call on you to join them in dispersing a meeting of those poor Huguenots and they would not permit me to send out to call you in!  I verily think they suspected that you were aware of it.’

M. de Ribaumont made no answer, but sat wearily down and asked for his little Eustacie.

‘Little vixen!’ exclaimed the Baroness, ’she is gone; her father took her away with him.’  And as her husband looked extremely displeased, she added that Eustacie had been meddling with her jewel cabinet and had been put in penitence.  Her first impulse on seeing her father had been to cling to him and poor out her complaints, whereupon he had declared that he should take her away with him at once, and had in effect caused her pony to be saddled, and he had ridden away with her to his old tower, leaving his brother, the Chevalier, to conduct the attack on the Huguenot conventicle.

‘He had no power or right to remove her,’ said the Baron.  ’How could you let him do so in my absence?  He had made over her wardship to me, and has no right to resume it!’

’Well, perhaps I might have insisted on his waiting till your return; but, you see, the children have never done anything but quarrel and fight, and always by Eustacie’s fault; and if ever they are to endure each other, it must be by being separated now.’

‘Madame,’ said the Baron, gravely, ’you have done your utmost to ruin your son’s chances of happiness.’

That same evening arrived the King’s passport permitting the Baron de Ribaumont and his family to pay a visit to his wife’s friends in England.  The next morning the Baron was summoned to speak to one of his farmers, a Huguenot, who had come to inform him that, through the network of intelligence kept up by the members of the persecuted faith, it had become known that the Chevalier de Ribaumont had set off for court that night, and there was little doubt that his interference would lead to an immediate revocation of the sanction to the journey, if to no severer measures.  At best, the Baron knew that if his own absence were permitted, it would be only on condition of leaving his son in the custody of either the Queen-mother or the Count.  It had become impossible to reclaim Eustacie.  Her father would at once have pleaded that she was being bred up in Huguenot errors.  All that could be done was to hasten the departure