There was a sound of wheels, and presently the gentleman usher came forward, announcing the Most Noble the Marquis de Nidemerle, and the Lord Viscount of Bellaise.  My father and brothers went half-way down the stairs to meet them, my mother advanced across the room, holding me in one hand and Annora in the other.  We all curtsied low, and as the gentlemen advanced, bowing low, and almost sweeping the ground with the plumes in their hats, we each had to offer them a cheek to salute after the English fashion.  The old marquis was talking French so fast that I could not understand him in the least, but somehow a mist suddenly seemed to clear away from before me, and I found that I was standing before that alarming table, not with him, but with something much younger—­not much older, indeed, than Eustace.

I began to hear what the notary was reading out, and behold it was—­ ’Contract of marriage on the part of Philippe Marie Francois de Bellaise, Marquis de Nidermerle, and Eustace de Ribaumont, Baron Walwyn of Walwyn, in Dorset, and Baron de Ribaumont in Picardy, on behoof of Gaspard Henri Philippe, Viscount de Bellaise, nephew of the Marquis de Nidemerle, and Margaret Henrietta Maria de Ribaumont, daughter of the Baron de Ribaumont.’

Then I knew that I had been taken in by the Prince’s wicked trick, and that my husband was to be the young viscount, not the old uncle!  I do not think that this was much comfort to me at the moment, for, all the same, I was going into a strange country, away from every one I had ever known.

But I did take courage to look up under my eye-lashes at the form I was to see with very different eyes.  M. de Ballaise was only nineteen, but although not so tall as my father or brother, he had already that grand military bearing which is only acquired in the French service, and no wonder, or he had been three years in the Regiment de Conde, and had already seen two battles and three sieges in Savoy, and now had only leave of absence for the winter before rejoining his regiment in the Low Countries.

Yet he looked as bashful as a maiden.  It was true that, as my father said, his bashfulness was as great as an Englishman’s.  Indeed, he had been bred up at his great uncle’s chateau in Anjou, under a strict abbe who had gone with him to the war, and from whom he was only now to be set free upon his marriage.  He had scarcely ever spoken to any lady but his old aunt—­his parents had long been dead—­ and he had only two or three times seen his little sister through the grating of her convent.  So, as he afterwards confessed, nothing but his military drill and training bore him through the affair.  He stood upright as a dart, bowed at the right place, and in due time signed his name to the contract, and I had to do the same.  Then there ensued a great state dinner, where he and I sat together, but neither of us spoke to the other; and when, as I was trying to see the viscount under my eyelashes, I caught his eyes trying to do the same by me, I remember my cheeks flaming all over, and I think his must have done the same, for my father burst suddenly out into a laugh without apparent cause, though he tried to check himself when he saw my mother’s vexation.