nough to make a man's heart warm.
Wait till you see her and she begins to talk of what the red-caps are
doing over there--those friends of yours, who are putting in practice
all your fine theories! And, bookworm as you are, I'll warrant she'll
warm your sluggish blood for you. Ha! she's a rare little lady. She
married last year the Count of Savenaye."

Adrian assumed a look of polite interest.

"Emigre, I presume?" he said, quietly.

"Emigre? No, sir. He is even now fighting the republican rapscallions,
d--n them, and thrashing them, too, yonder in his country. She stuck
by his side; ay, like a good plucked one she did, until it became
palpable that, if there was to be a son and heir to the name, she had
better go and attend to its coming somewhere else, in peace. Ho, ho,
ho! Well, England was the safest place, of course, and, for her, the
natural one. She came and offered herself to us on the plea of
relationship. I was rather taken aback at first, I own; but, gad, boy,
when I saw the woman, after hearing what she had had to go through to
reach us at all, I sang another song. Well, she is a fine
creature--finer than ever now that the progeny has been satisfactorily
hatched; a brace of girls instead of the son and heir, after all! Two
of them; no less. Ho, ho, ho! And she was furious, the pretty dear!
However, you'll soon see for yourself. You will see a woman, sir, who
has loaded and fired cannon with her own hands, when the last man to
serve it had been shot. Ay, and more than that, my lad--she's brained
a hulking sans-culotte that was about to pin her servant to the floor.
The lad has told me so himself, and I daresay he can tell you more if
you care to practise your French with master Rene L'Apotre, that's the
fellow! A woman who sticks to her lord and master in mud and
powder-smoke until there is precious little time to spare, when she
makes straight for a strange land, in a fishing-smack, with no other
protector than a peasant; and now, with an imp of a black-eyed infant
to her breast (Sally Mearson's got the other; you remember Sally, your
own nurse's daughter?), looks like a chit of seventeen. That's what
you'll see, sir. And when she sails downstairs for dinner, dressed up,
powdered and high-heeled, she might be a princess, a queen who has
never felt a crumpled roseleaf in her life. Gad! I'm getting poetical,
I declare."

In this strain did the Squire, guiding his horses with strong,
dexterous hand, expati