but you!'

'I am all very well here, when you have never seen anybody but lubberly
Dorset squires that never went to London, nor Oxford, nor beyond their
own furrows,' said Berenger; 'but depend upon it, she has been bred up
to care for all the airs and graces that are all the fashion at Paris
now, and will be as glad to be rid of an honest man and a Protestant
as I shall to be quit of a court puppet and a Papist. Shall you have
finished my point-cuffs next week, Lucy? Depend upon it, no gentleman of
them all will wear such dainty lace of such a fancy as those will be.'

And Lucy smiled, well pleased.

Coming from the companionship of Eustacie to that of gentle Lucy had
been to Berenger a change from perpetual warfareto perfect supremacy,
and his preference to his little sister, as he had been taught to call
her from the first, had been loudly expressed. Brother and sister they
had ever since considered themselves, and only within the last few
months had possibilities been discussed among the elders of the family,
which oozing out in some mysterious manner, had become felt rather than
known among the young people, yet without altering the habitual terms
that existed between them. Both were so young that love was the merest,
vaguest dream to them; and Lucy, in her quiet faith that Berenger was
the most beautiful, excellent, and accomplished cavalier the earth
could afford, was little troubled about her own future share in him. She
seemed to be promoted to belong to him just as she had grown up to curl
her hair and wear ruffs and farthingales. And to Berenger Lucy was
a very pleasant feature in that English home, where he had been far
happier than in the uncertainties of Chateau Leurre, between his naughty
playfellow, his capricious mother, and morose father. If in England his
lot was to be cast, Lucy was acquiesced in willingly as a portion of
that lot.

CHAPTER IV. TITHONUS

A youth came riding towards a palace gate,
And from the palace came a child of sin
And took him by the curls and led him in!
Where sat a company with heated eyes.
Tennyson, A VISION OF SIN

It was in the month of June that Berenger de Ribaumont first came in
sight of Paris. His grandfather had himself begun by taking him to
London and presenting him to Queen Elizabeth, from whom the lad's good
mien procured him a most favourable reception. She willingly promised
that on which Lord Walwyn'