and heir to estates in his kingdom, meseemeth that before you are come to years of discretion it were well that you should visit them, and become better able to judge for yourself how to deal in this matter when you shall have attained full age, and may be able to dispose of them by sale, thus freeing yourself from allegiance to a foreign prince.  And at the same time you can take measures, in concert with this young lady, for loosing the wedlock so unhappily contracted.’

‘O sir, sir!’ cried Lady Thistlewood, ’send him not to France to be burnt by the Papists!’

‘Peace, daughter,’ returned her mother.  ’Know you not that there is friendship between the court party and the Huguenots, and that the peace is to be sealed by the marriage of the King’s sister with the King of Navarre?  This is the most suitable time at which he could go.’

‘Then, madam,’ proceeded the lady, ’he will be running about to all the preachings on every bleak moor and wet morass he can find, catching his death with rheums, like his poor father.’

There was a general smile, and Sir Marmaduke laughed outright.

‘Nay, dame,’ he said, ’have you marked such a greed of sermons in our Berry that you should fear his so untowardly running after them?’

‘Tilly-vally, Sir Duke,’ quoth Dame Annora, with a flirt of her fan, learnt at the French court.  ’Men will run after a preacher in a marshy bog out of pure forwardness, when they will nod at a godly homily on a well-stuffed bench between four walls.’

’I shall commit that matter to Mr. Adderley, who is good enough to accompany him,’ said Lord Walwyn, ’and by whose counsel I trust that he will steer the middle course between the pope and Calvin.’

Mr. Adderley bowed in answer, saying he hoped that he should be enable to keep his pupil’s mind clear between the allurements of Popery and the errors of the Reformed; but meanwhile Lady Thistlewood’s mind had taken a leap, and she exclaimed,—­

’And, son, whatever you do, bring home the chaplet of pearls!  I know they have set their minds upon it.  They wanted me to deck Eustacie with it on that unlucky bridal-day, but I would not hear of trusting her with it, and now will it rarely become our Lucy on your real wedding-day.’

‘You travel swiftly, daughter,’ said Lord Walwyn.  ’Nor have we yet heard the thoughts of one who ever thinks wisely.  Sister,’ he added, turning to Cecily St. John, ’hold not you with us in this matter?’

‘I scarce comprehend it, my Lord,’ was the gentle reply.  ’I knew not that it was possible to dissolve the tie of wedlock.’

‘The Pope’s decree will suffice,’ said Lord Walwyn.

‘Yet, sir,’ still said the ex-nun, ’methought you had shown me that the Holly Father exceeded his power in the annulling of vows.’

‘Using mine own lessons against me, sweet sister?’ said Lord Walwyn, smiling; ’yet, remember, the contract was rashly made between two ignorant babes; and, bred up as they have severally been, it were surely best for them to be set free from vows made without their true will or knowledge.’