t right to come to an agreement
in the matter, that as a first step the Lord Francis V----s should
betake himself to some other place of hiding, as more in keeping with
Mrs. Greenville's honour; but that, with the consent of her father and
brother, he should be solemnly betrothed to her; and that, so soon as
the troubles were over, or that the price which was upon his head were
taken off, he should become her husband. And there was even a saving
clause added, that if the national disturbances unhappily continued,
Mrs. Greenville should be privately conveyed abroad, and that the Lord
Francis should marry her so soon after a certain lapse of time as he
could conveniently get beyond sea. My Lord Duke of B----m had nothing to
say against the match, loving his brother, as he did, very dearly; and
so, in the very roughest of times, this truest of true loves seemed to
bid fair to have a smooth course.

But alas the day! My Grandmother's passion for the young Lord was a very
madness. On his part, he idolised her, calling her by names and writing
her letters that are nonsensical enough in common life, but which are
not held to be foolish pleas in Love's Chancery. When the boy and
girl--for they were scarcely more--parted, she gave him one of her rich
brown tresses; he gave her one of his own dainty love-locks. They broke
a broad piece in halves between them; each hung the fragment by a ribbon
next the heart. They swore eternal fidelity, devotion. Naught but Death
should part them, they said. Foolish things to say and do, no doubt; but
I look at my grizzled old head in the glass, and remember that I have
said and done things quite as foolish forty--fifty years ago.

Nothing but Death was to part them; and nothing but Death so parted
them. The Esquire Greenville, his business being brought to a pleasant
termination, having paid his Fine and gotten his Safe-Conduct and his
Redemption from Sequestration, betook himself once more to the West. His
daughter went with him, nourishing her love and fondling it, and
dwelling, syllable by syllable, on the letters which the Lord Francis
sent her from time to time. He was in hopes, he said, to get away to
Holland.

Then came that wicked business of the King's Murder. Mr. Greenville, as
became a loyal gentleman, was utterly dismayed at that horrid crime; but
to Arabella the news was as of the intelligence of the death of some
loved and revered friend. She wept, she sobbed, she called on Heav