‘And yet,’ said Cecily, perplexed, ’when I saw my niece here wedded to Sir Marmaduke, was it not with the words, ’What God hath joined let no man put asunder’?’

‘Good lack! aunt,’ cried Lady Thistlewood, ’you would not have that poor lad wedded to a pert, saucy, ill-tempered little moppet, bred up that den of iniquity, Queen Catherine’s court, where my poor Baron never trusted me after he fell in with the religion, and had heard of King Antony’s calling me the Swan of England.’

At that moment there was a loud shriek, half-laugh, half-fright, coming through the window, and Lady Thistlewood, starting up, exclaimed, ’The child will be drowned!  Box their ears, Berenger, and bring them in directly.’

Berenger, at her bidding, hurried out of the room into the hall, and thence down a flight of steps leading into a square walled garden, with a couple of stone male and female marine divinities accommodating their fishy extremities as best they might on the corners of the wall.  The square contained a bowling-green of exquisitely-kept turf, that looked as if cut out of green velvet, and was edged on its four sides by a raised broad-paved walk, with a trimming of flower-beds, where the earliest blossoms were showing themselves.  In the centre of each side another paved path intersected the green lawn, and the meeting of these two diameters was at a circular stone basin, presided over by another merman, blowing a conch on the top of a pile of rocks.  On the gravelled margin stood two distressed little damsels of seven and six years old, remonstrating with all their might against the proceedings of a roguish-looking boy of fourteen of fifteen, who had perched their junior—­a fat, fair, kitten-like element of mischief, aged about five—­en croupe on the merman, and was about, according to her delighted request, to make her a bower of water, by extracting the plug and setting the fountain to play; but as the fountain had been still all the winter, the plug was hard of extraction, especially to a young gentleman who stood insecurely, with his feet wide apart upon pointed and slippery point of rock-work; and Berenger had time to hurry up, exclaiming, ’Giddy pate!  Dolly would Berenger drenched to the skin.’

’And she has on her best blue, made out of mother’s French farthingale,’ cried the discreet Annora.

’Do you know, Dolly, I’ve orders to box your ears, and send you in?’ added Berenger, as he lifted his half-sister from her perilous position, speaking, as he did so, without a shade of foreign accent, though with much more rapid utterance than was usual in England.  She clung to him without much alarm, and retaliated by an endeavour to box his ears, while Philip, slowly making his way back to the mainland, exclaimed, ’Ah there’s no chance now!  Here comes demure Mistress Lucy, and she is the worst mar-sport of all.’