’Yes, they will be all at court, and the good Admiral is said to be in high favour.  He will surely remember my father.’

‘And shall you see the lady?’ asked Lucy, under her breath.

’Eustacie?  Probably; but that will make no change.  I have heard too much of l’escadron de la Reine-mere to endure the thought of a wife from thence, were she the Queen of Beauty herself.  And my mother says that Eustacie would lose all her beauty as she grew up--like black-eyed Sue on the down; nor did I ever think her brown skin and fierce black eyes to compare with you, Lucy.  I could be well content never to see her more; but,’ and here he lowered his voice to a tone of confidence, ’my father, when near his death, called me, and told me that he feared my marriage would be a cause of trouble and temptation to me, and that I must deal with it after my conscience when I was able to judge in the matter.  Something, too, he said of the treaty of marriage being a burthen on his soul, but I know not what he meant.  If ever I saw Eustacie again, I was to give her his own copy of Clement Marot’s Psalter, and to tell her that he had ever loved and prayed for her as a daughter; and moreover, my father added,’ said Berenger, much moved at the remembrance it brought across him, ’that if this matter proved a burthen and perplexity to me, I was to pardon him as one who repented of it as a thing done ere he had learnt to weigh the whole world against a soul.’

‘Yes, you must see her,’ said Lucy.

‘Well, what more were you going to say, Lucy?’

‘I was only thinking,’ said Lucy, as she raised her eyes to him, ‘how sorry she will be that she let them write that letter.’

Berenger laughed, pleased with the simplicity of Lucy’s admiration, but with modesty and common sense enough to answer, ’No fear of that, Lucy, for an heiress, with all the court gallants of France at her feet.’

‘Ah, but you!’

’I am all very well here, when you have never seen anybody but lubberly Dorset squires that never went to London, nor Oxford, nor beyond their own furrows,’ said Berenger; ’but depend upon it, she has been bred up to care for all the airs and graces that are all the fashion at Paris now, and will be as glad to be rid of an honest man and a Protestant as I shall to be quit of a court puppet and a Papist.  Shall you have finished my point-cuffs next week, Lucy?  Depend upon it, no gentleman of them all will wear such dainty lace of such a fancy as those will be.’

And Lucy smiled, well pleased.

Coming from the companionship of Eustacie to that of gentle Lucy had been to Berenger a change from perpetual warfareto perfect supremacy, and his preference to his little sister, as he had been taught to call her from the first, had been loudly expressed.  Brother and sister they had ever since considered themselves, and only within the last few months had possibilities been discussed among the elders of the family, which