s
attitude was easy and graceful, and he used no stiff rigidity nor
restless movements to mask his anxiety. At Sir Marmaduke's desire, he
could not but redden a good deal more, but with a clear, unhesitating
voice, he translated, the letter that he had received from the Chevalier
de Ribaumont, who, by the Count's death, had become Eustacie's guardian.
It was a request in the name of Eustacie and her deceased father, that
Monsieur le Baron de Ribaumont--who, it was understood, had embraced
the English heresy--would concur with his spouse in demanding from his
Holiness the Pope a decree annulling the childish marriage, which could
easily be declared void, both on account of the consanguinity of the
parties and the discrepancy of their faith; and which would leave each
of them free to marry again.

'Nothing can be better,' exclaimed his mother. 'How I have longed to
free him from that little shrew, whose tricks were the plague of my
life! Now there is nothing between him and a worthy match!'

'We can make an Englishman of him now to the backbone,' added Sir
Marmaduke, 'and it is well that it should be the lady herself who wants
first to be off with it, so that none can say he has played her a scurvy
trick.'

'What say you, Berenger?' said Lord Walwyn. 'Listen to me, fair nephew.
You know that all my remnant of hope is fixed upon you, and that I have
looked to setting you in the room of the son of my own; and I think that
under our good Queen you will find it easier to lead a quiet God-fearing
life than in your father's vexed country, where the Reformed religion
lies under persecution. Natheless, being a born liegeman of the King of
France, and heir to estates in his kingdom, meseemeth that before you
are come to years of discretion it were well that you should visit them,
and become better able to judge for yourself how to deal in this matter
when you shall have attained full age, and may be able to dispose of
them by sale, thus freeing yourself from allegiance to a foreign prince.
And at the same time you can take measures, in concert with this young
lady, for loosing the wedlock so unhappily contracted.'

'O sir, sir!' cried Lady Thistlewood, 'send him not to France to be
burnt by the Papists!'

'Peace, daughter,' returned her mother. 'Know you not that there is
friendship between the court party and the Huguenots, and that the peace
is to be sealed by the marriage of the King's sister with the King of
Navarre? Thi