as now, the sunset
light came below the branches, richly tinted the russet pillars, cast
long shadows, and gleamed into all the recesses of the interlacing
boughs and polished leafage above.

'Do you see, Sir Duke?' demanded his lady.

'I see my little maids making a rare feast under the trees upon their
strawberries set out on leaves. Bless their little hearts! what a pretty
fairy feast they've made of it, with the dogs looking on as grave as
judges! It takes me young again to get a smack of the haut-bois your
mother brought from Chelsea Gardens.'

'Haut-bois! He'd never see if the house ere afire overhead. What's that
beyond?'

'No fire, my dear, but the sky all aglow with sunset, and the red cow
standing up against the light, chewing her cud, and looking as well
pleased as though she knew there wasn't her match in Dorset.'

Lady Thistlewood fairly stamped, and pointed with her fan, like a
pistol, down a side aisle of the grove, where two figures were slowly
moving along.

'Eh! what? Lucy with her apron full of rose-leaves, letting them
float away while she cons the children's lesson for the morrow with
Merrycourt? They be no great loss, when the place is full of roses. Or
why could you not call to the wench to take better heed of them, instead
of making all this pother?'

'A pretty sort of lesson it is like to be! A pretty sort of return for
my poor son, unless you take the better heed!'

'Would that I saw any return at all for either of the poor dear lads,'
sighed the knight wearily; 'but what you may be driving at I cannot
perceive.'

'What! When 'tis before your very eyes, how yonder smooth-tongued French
impostor, after luring him back to his ruin beyond seas, is supplanting
him even here, and your daughter giving herself over to the wily viper!'

'The man is a popish priest,' said Sir Marmaduke; 'no more given to love
than Mr. Adderley or Friar Rogers.'

The dame gave a snort of derision:' Prithee, how many popish priests be
now wedded parsons? Nor, indeed, even if his story be true, do I believe
he is a priest at all. I have seen many a young abbe, as they call
themselves, clerk only in name, loitering at court, free to throw off
the cassock any moment they chose, and as insolent as the rest. Why, the
Abbe de Lorraine, cardinal that is now, said of my complexion---'

'No vows, quotha!' muttered Sir Marmaduke, well aware of the Cardinal de
Lorraine's opinion of his lady's complexion. 'So much the