t?'

And Eustacie signed her acquiescence, as indeed no difficulty was made
in her being regarded as the widow of the Baron de Ribaumont, when she
further insisted on procuring a widow's dress before she quitted her
room, and declared, with much dignity, that she should esteem no person
her friend who called her Mademoiselle de Nid-de-Merle. To this the
Chevalier de Ribaumont was willing to give way; he did not care whether
Narcisse married her as Berenger's widow or as the separated maiden
wife, and he thought her vehement opposition and dislike would die away
the faster the fewer impediments were placed in her way. Both he and
Diane strongly discouraged any attempt on Narcisse's widow part at a
farewell interview; and thus unmolested, and under the constant soothing
influence of reciting her prayers, in the trust that they were availing
her husband, Eustacie rallied so much that about ten day after the
dreadful St. Batholomew, in the early morning, she was half-led
half-carried down the stairs between her uncle and Veronique. Her face
was close muffled in her thick black veil, but when she came to the
foot of the first stairs where she had found Berenger's cap, a terrible
shuddering came on her; she again murmured something about the smell of
blood, and fell into a swoon.

'Carry her on at once,' said Diane, who was following,--'there will be
not end to it if you do not remove her immediately.'

And thus shielded from the sight of Marcisse's intended passionate
gesture of farewell at the palace-door, Eustecie was laid at full length
on the seat of the great ponderous family coach, where Veronique hardly
wished to revive her till the eight horses should have dragged her
beyond the streets of Paris, with their terrible associations, and the
gibbets still hung with the limbs of the murdered.

CHAPTER XIII. THE BRIDEGROOM'S ARRIVAL

The starling flew to his mother's window stane,
It whistled and it sang,
And aye, the ower word of the tune
Was 'Johnnie tarries lang.'
--JOHNNIE OF BREDISLEE

There had been distrust and dissatisfaction at home for many a day past.
Berenger could hardly be censured for loving his own wife, and yet his
family were by not means gratified by the prospect of his bringing home
a little French Papist, of whom Lady Thistlewood remembered nothing
good.

Lucy was indignantly fetched home by her stepmother, who insisted
on treating her with extreme