st hide her for ever in a convent--they would force me into this
abhorrent marriage. No--no--no--my child and I would die a hundred
deaths together rather than fall into the hands of Narcisse.'

'Calm yourself, Lady; there is no present fear, but I deem that the
safest course for the little one would be to place her in England. She
must be heiress to lands and estates there; is she not?'

'Yes; and in Normandy.'

'And your husband's mother lives? Wherefore then should you not take me
for your guide, and make your way--more secretly than would be possible
with a peasant escort--to one of your Huguenot towns on the coast,
whence you could escape with the child to England?'

'My _belle-mere_ has re-married! She has children! I would not bring
the daughter of Ribaumont as a suppliant to be scorned!' said Eustacie,
pouting. 'She has lands enough of her own.'

'There is no need to discuss the question now,' said M. Gardon, gravely;
for a most kind offer, involving much peril and inconvenience to
himself, was thus petulantly flouted. 'Madame will think at her leisure
of what would have been the wishes of Monsieur le Baron for his child.'

He then held himself aloof, knowing that it was not well for her health,
mental or bodily, to talk any more, and a good deal perplexed himself by
the moods of his strange little impetuous convert, if convert she could
be termed. He himself was a deeply learned scholar, who had studied
all the bearings of the controversy; and, though bound to the French
Reformers who would gladly have come to terms with the Catholics at the
Conference of Plassy, and regretted the more decided Calvinism that
his party had since professed, and in which the Day of St. Bartholomew
confirmed them. He had a strong sense of the grievous losses they
suffered by their disunion from the Church. The Reformed were less and
less what his ardent youthful hopes had trusted to see them; and in his
old age he was a sorrow-stricken man, as much for the cause of religion
as for personal bereavements. He had little desire to win proselytes,
but rather laid his hand to build up true religion where he found it
suffering shocks in these unsettled, neglected times; and his present
wish was rather to form and guide this little willful warm-hearted
mother--whom he could not help regarding with as much affection as
pity--to find a home in the Church that had been her husband's, than
to gain her to his own party. And most assuredly