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’s heart was set, namely, that his title and rank should be continued to his grandson; and an ample store of letter of recommendation to Sir Francis Walsingham, the Ambassador, and all others who could be of service in the French court, were to do their utmost to provide him with a favourable reception there.

Then, with Mr. Adderley and four or five servants, he had crossed the Channel, and had gone first to Chateau Leurre, where he was rapturously welcomed by the old steward Osbert.  The old man had trained up his son Landry, Berenger’s foster-brother, to become his valet, and had him taught all the arts of hair-dressing and surgery that were part of the profession of a gentleman’s body-servant; and the youth, a smart, acuter young Norman, became a valuable addition to the suite, the guidance of which, through a foreign country, their young master did not find very easy.  Mr. Adderley thought he knew French very well, through books, but the language he spoke was not available, and he soon fell into a state of bewilderment rather hard on his pupil, who, though a very good boy, and crammed very full of learning, was still nothing more than a lad of eighteen in all matters of prudence and discretion.