this.'

'How should she know, sir, what I knew not myself?'

'Ha! ha!' chuckled Sir Duke to himself, 'so 'twas all Dame Nan's doing
that the flame has been lighted! Ho! ho! But what is to come next is the
question?' and he eyed the French youth from head to foot with the same
considering look with which he was wont to study a bullock.

'Sir, sir,' cried Mericour, absolutely flinging himself on his knee
before him with national vehemence, 'do give me hope! Oh! I will bless
you, I will---'

'Get up, man,' said the knight, hastily; 'no fooling of this sort. The
milkmaids will be coming. Hope--why, what sort of hope can be given you
in the matter?' he continued; 'you are a very good lad, and I like you
well enough, but you are not the sort of stuff one gives one's daughter
to. Ay, ay, I know you are a great man in your own country, but what are
you here?'

'A miserable fugitive and beggar, I know that,' said Mericour,
vehemently, 'but let me have but hope, and there is nothing I will not
be!'

'Pish!' said Sir Marmaduke.

'Hear me,' entreated the youth, recalled to common sense: 'you know
that I have lingered at the chateau yonder, partly to study divinity
and settle my mind, and partly because my friend Ribaumont begged me to
await his return. I will be no longer idle; my mind is fixed. To France
I cannot return, while she gives me no choice between such doctrine and
practice as I saw at court, and such as the Huguenots would have imposed
on me. I had already chosen England as my country before--before this
wild hope had awakened in me. Here, I know my nobility counts for
nothing, though, truly, sir, few names in France are prouder. But it
shall be no hindrance. I will become one of your men of the robe. I have
heard that they can enrich themselves and intermarry with your country
_noblesse_.'

'True, true,' said Sir Marmaduke, 'there is more sense in that notion
than there seemed to be in you at first. My poor brother Phil was to
have been a lawyer if he had lived, but it seems to me you are a long
way off from that yet! Why, our Templars be mostly Oxford scholars.'

'So it was explained to me,' said Mericour, 'but for some weeks past the
Lady Burnet, to whose sons, as you know, I have been teaching French,
has been praying me to take the charge of them at Oxford, by which means
I should at least be there maintained, and perchance obtain the means
for carrying on my studies at the Temple.'

'Not ill thought