better; he
is too good a young fellow to be forced to mope single, and yet I hate
men's breaking their word.'

'And that's all you have to say!' angrily cried her ladyship. 'No one
save myself ever thinks how it is to be with my poor dear wounded,
heart-broken son, when he comes home, to find himself so scurvily used
by that faithless girl of yours, ready---'

'Hold, madam,' said Sir Marmaduke, with real sternness; 'nothing rash
against my daughter. How should she be faithless to a man who has been
wedded ever since she knew him?'

'He is free now,' said Lady Thistlewood, beginning to cry (for the last
letters received from Berenger had been those from Paris, while he still
believed Eustacie to have perished at La Sablerie); 'and I do say it is
very hard that just when he is rid of the French baggage, the bane of
his life, and is coming home, maybe with a child upon his hands, and all
wounded, scarred, and blurred, the only wench he would or should have
married should throw herself away on a French vagabond beggar, and you
aiding and abetting.'

'Come, come, Dame Nan,' said Sir Marmaduke, 'who told you I was aiding
and abetting?'

'Tell me not, Sir Duke, you that see them a courting under your very
eyes, and will not stir a finger to hinder it. If you like to see your
daughter take up with a foreign adventurer, why, she's no child of mine,
thank Heaven! And I've nought to do with it.'

'Pshaw, dame, there's no taking up in the case; and if there were, sure
it is not you that should be hard on Lucy.'

Whereupon Annora fell into such a flood of tears at the cruelty of
casting such things up to her, that Sir Marmaduke was fain in his
blundering way to declare that he only meant that an honest Englishman
had no chance where a Frenchman once came in, and then very nearly to
surrender at discretion. At any rate, he escaped from her tears by going
out at the door, and calling to Lucy to mind her rose-leaves; then, as
she gazed round, dismayed at the pink track along the ground, he asked
her what she had been doing. Whereto she answered with bright face and
honest eyes, that Mr. Mericour had been going over with her the ode
'_Jam satis_,' of Horatius, wherewith to prepare little Nan for him
to-morrow, and then she ran hurriedly away to secure the remainder of
the rose-leaves, while her companion was already on his knees picking up
the petals she had dropped.

'Master Merrycourt,' said Sir Marmaduke, a little gruffly,