‘A sorry way of squeezing into Heaven,’ I said; and then he began arguing, as he had done a hundred times before, on the blessing and rest he had found in the Church, after renouncing his errors.  And no wonder, for it is well known that my Lord Mandeville brought up his family to be mere Puritans.  However, I said:  ’Look you here, Mr. Montagu; if my brother, Lord Walwyn, gave himself to you of deliberate mind, with full health and faculties, you might think him a gain indeed.  Or if you like it better, he would have a claim to the promises of your Church; but if you merely take advantage of the weakness of a man at the point of death to make him seem a traitor to his whole life, why, then, I should say you trusted, more than I do, to what you call Divine promises.’

He told me—­as they always do—­that I knew nothing about it, and that he should pray for me.  But I had some trust that his English blood would be guilty of no foul play.  I was much more afraid of the Dominican; only one good thing was that the man was not a priest.  So went by Good Friday and Easter Eve.  They would not let me go to church for fear I should speak to any one.  Madame Croquelebois and my mother’s old smirking tire-woman, Bellote, took turns to mount guard over me.  I heard worse and worse accounts of my dear brother’s bodily state, but I had one comfort.  One of the servants secretly handed Tryphena this little note addressed to me, in feeble straggling characters:—­

’Do what they may to me my will does not consent.  Pray for me.  If word were taken to the K. E. W. and R.’

It was some comfort that I should have that to prove what my brother was to the last.  I made me able to weep and pray—­pray as I had never prayed before—­all that night and that strange sad Easter morning, when all the bells were ringing, and the people flocking to the churches, and I sat cut off from them all in my chamber, watching, watching in dread of sounds that might tell me that my dearest and only brother, my one hope, was taken from me, body and soul, and by my fault, in great part.

Oh! what a day it was, as time went on.  Madame Croquelebois went to high mass, and Bellote remained in charge.  I was, you understand, a prisoner at large.  Provided some one was attending me, I went into any room in the house save the only one where I cared to be.  And I was sitting in the salon, with my Bible and Prayer-book before me—­ not reading, I fear me, but at any rate attesting my religion, when there came up a message that Son Altesse Royale, the Duke of Gloucester, requested to be admitted to see Mademoiselle de Ribaumont.

Nobody made any question about admitting a Royal Highness, so up he came, the dear boy, with his bright hazel eyes like his father’s, and his dark shining curls on his neck.  He had missed me at the ambassador’s chapel, and being sure, from my absence, that my brother must be very ill indeed, he had come himself to inquire.  He could as yet speak little French, and not understanding what they told him at the door, he had begged to see me.