London Pride, Or, When the World Was Younger

by M. E. Braddon

  CHAPTER IX.

  IN A PURITAN HOUSE.

  How quickly the days passed in that gay household at Chilton! and yet everyday of Angela's life held so much of action and emotion that, looking backat Christmas time to the three months that had slipped by since she hadbrought Fareham from his sick bed to his country home, she could butexperience that common feeling of youth in such circumstances. Surelyit was half a lifetime that had lapsed; or else she, by some subtle andsupernatural change, had become a new creature.

  She thought of her life in the Convent, thought of it much and deeply onthose Sunday mornings when she and her sister and De Malfort and a score orso of servants crept quietly to a room in the heart of the house where aPriest, who had been fetched from Oxford in, Lady Fareham's coach, saidMass within locked doors. The familiar words of the service, the odour ofthe incense, brought back the old time--the unforgotten atmosphere, thedull tranquillity of ten years, which had been as one year by reason oftheir level monotony.

  Could she go back to such a life as that? Go back! Leave all she loved? Atthe mere suggestion her trembling hand was stretched out involuntarily toclasp her niece Henriette, kneeling beside her. Leave them--leave thosewith whom and for whom she lived? Leave this loving child--her sister--herbrother? Fareham had told her to call him "Brother." He had been to her asa brother, with all a brother's kindness, counselling her, confiding inher.

  Only with one person at Chilton Abbey had she ever conversed as seriouslyas with Fareham, and that person was Sir Denzil Warner, who at five andtwenty was more serious in his way of looking at serious things than mostmen of fifty.

  "I cannot make a jest of life," he said once, in reply to some flippantspeech of De Malfort's; "it is too painful a business for the majority."

  "What has that to do with us--the minority? Can we smooth a sick man'spillow by pulling a long face? We shall do him more good by tossing him acrown, if he be poor; or helping to build him a hospital by the sacrificeof a night's winnings at ombre. Long faces help nobody; that is what youPuritans will never consider."

  "No; but if the long faces are the faces of men who think, something maycome of their thoughts for the good of humanity."

  Denzil Warner was the only person who ever spoke to Angela of her religion.With extreme courtesy, and with gentle excuses for his temerity in touchingon so delicate a theme, he ventured to express his abhorrence of thesuperstitions interwoven with the Romanist's creed. He talked as one whohad sat at the feet of the blind poet--talked sometimes in the very wordsof John Milton.

  There was much in what he said that appealed to her reason; but there wasno charm in that severer form of worship which he offered in exchange forher own. He was frank and generous; he had a fine nature, but was too muchgiven to judging his fellow-men. He had all the arrogance of Puritanismsuperadded to the natural arrogance of youth that has never knownhumiliating reverses, that has never been the servant of circumstance. Hewas Angela's senior by something less than four years; yet it seemed to herthat he was in every attribute infinitely her superior. In education, indepth of thought, in resolution for good, and scorn of evil. If he lovedher--as Hyacinth insisted upon declaring--there was nothing of youthfulimpetuosity in his passion. He had, indeed, betrayed his sentiments by nodirect speech. He had told her gravely that he was interested in her, anddeeply concerned that one so worthy and so amiable should have been broughtup in the house of idolaters, should have been taught falsehood instead oftruth.

  She stood up boldly for the faith of her maternal ancestors.

  "I cannot continue your friend if you speak evil of those I love, SirDenzil," she said. "Could you have seen the lives of those good ladies ofthe Ursuline Convent, their unselfishness, their charity, you must needshave respected their religion. I cannot think why you love to say hardwords of us Catholics; for in all I have ever heard or seen of the livesof the Nonconformists they approach us far more nearly in their principlesthan the members of the Church of England, who, if my sister does not paintthem with too black a brush, practise their religion with a laxity andindifference that would go far to turn religion to a jest."

  Whatever Sir Denzil's ideas might be upon the question of creed--and hedid not scruple to tell Angela that he thought every Papist foredoomed toeverlasting punishment--he showed so much pleasure in her society as tobe at Chilton Abbey, and the sharer of her walks and rides, as often aspossible. Lady Fareham encouraged his visits, and was always gracious tohim. She discovered that he possessed the gift of music, though not inthe same remarkable degree as Henri de Malfort, who played the guitarexquisitely, and into whose hands you had but to put a musical instrumentfor him to extract sweetness from it. Lute or theorbo, viola or viol digamba, treble or bass, came alike to his hand and ear. Some instruments hehad studied; with some his skill came by intuition.

  Denzil Warner performed very creditably upon the organ. He had played onJohn Milton's organ in St. Bride's Church, when he was a boy, and he hadplayed of late in the church at Chalfont St. Giles, where he had visitedMilton frequently, since the poet had left his lodgings in Artillery Walk,carrying his family and his books to that sequestered village in theshelter of the hills between Uxbridge and Beaconsfield. Here from the lipsof his sometime tutor the Puritan had heard such stories of the Court asmade him hourly expectant of exterminating fires. Doubtless the fire wouldhave come, as it came upon Sodom and Gomorrah, but for those righteouslives of the Nonconformists, which redeemed the time; quiet, god-fearinglives in dull old city houses, in streets almost as narrow as those whichMilton remembered in his beloved Italy; streets where the sun looked in foran hour, shooting golden arrows down upon the diamond-paned casements, anddeepening the shadow of the massive timbers that held up the overlappingstories, looked in and bade "good night" within an hour or so, leavingan atmosphere of sober grey, cool, and quiet, and dull, in those obscurestreets and alleys where the great traffic of Cheapside or Ludgate soundedlike the murmur of a far-off sea.

  Pious men and women worshipped the implacable God of the Puritans in thesecret chambers of those narrow streets; and those who gathered togetherin these days--if they rejected the Liturgy of the Church of England--mustindeed be few, and must meet by stealth, as if to pray or preach aftertheir own manner were a crime. Charles, within a year or so of his generalamnesty and happy restoration, had made such worship criminal; and now theFive Mile Act, lately passed at Oxford, had rendered the restrictions andpenalties of Nonconformity utterly intolerable. Men were lying in prisonhere and there about merry England for no greater offence than preachingthe gospel to a handful of God-fearing people. But that a Puritan tinkershould moulder for a dozen years in a damp jail could count for littleagainst the blessed fact of the Maypole reinstated in the Strand, and fiveplay-houses in London performing ribald comedies, till but recently, whenthe plague shut their doors.

  Milton, old and blind, and somewhat soured by domestic disappointments, hadimparted no optimistic philosophy to young Denzil Warner, whose father hehad known and loved. The fight at Hopton Heath had made Denzil fatherless;the Colonel of Warner's horse riding to his death in the last fatal chargeof that memorable day.

  Denzil had grown up under the prosperous rule of the Protector, andhis boyhood had been spent in the guardianship of a most watchfuland serious-minded mother. He had been somewhat over-cosseted andapron-stringed, it may be, in that tranquil atmosphere of the rich widow'shouse; but not all Lady Warner's tenderness could make her son a milksop.Except for a period of two years in London, when he had lived under theroof of the great Republican, a docile pupil to a stern but kind master,Denzil had lived mostly under the open sky, was a keen sportsman, and lovedthe country with almost as sensitive a love as his quondam master andpresent friend, John Milton; and it was perhaps this appreciation of ruralbeauty which had made a bond of friendship between the great poet and thePuritan squire.

  "You have a knack of painting rural scenes which needs but to be joinedwith the gift of music to make you a poet," he said, when Denzi
l had beenexpatiating upon the landscape amidst which he had enjoyed his last bout offalconry, or his last run with his half-dozen couple of hounds. "You arealmost as the power of sight to me when you describe those downs andvalleys whose every shape and shadow I once knew so well. Alas, that Ishould be changed so much and they so little!"

  "It is one thing, sir, to feel that this world is beautiful, and anotherto find golden words and phrases which to a prisoner in the Tower couldconjure up as fair a landscape as Claude Lorraine ever painted. Thosesonorous and mellifluous lines which you were so gracious as to repeat tome, forming part of the great epic which the world is waiting for, bearwitness to the power that can turn words into music, and make pictures outof the common tongue. That splendid art, sir, is but given to one man ina century--or in several centuries; since I know but Dante and Virgil whohave ever equalled your vision of heaven and hell."

  "Do not over-praise me, Denzil, in thy charity to poverty and affliction.It is pleasing to be understood by a youth who loves hawk and hound betterthan books; for it offers the promise of popular appreciation in years tocome. Yet the world is so little athirst for my epic that I doubt if Ishall find a bookseller to give me a few pounds for the right to print awork that has cost me years of thought and laborious revision. But at leastit has been my consolation in the long blank night of my decay, and hassaved me many a heart-ache. For while I am building up my verses, andengraving line after line upon the tablets of memory, I can forget thatI am blind, and poor, and neglected, and that the dear saint I loved wassnatched from me in the noontide of our happiness."

  Denzil talked much of John Milton in his conversations with Angela, duringthose rides or rambles, in which Papillon was their only chaperon. LadyFareham sauntered, like her royal master; but she rarely walked a mile at astretch; and she was pleased to encourage the rural wanderings that broughther sister and Warner into a closer intimacy, and promised well for thesuccess of her matrimonial scheme.

  "I believe they adore each other already," she told Fareham one morning,standing by his side in the great stone porch, to watch those threeyouthful figures ride away, aunt and niece side by side, on palfrey andpony, with Denzil for their cavalier.

  "You are always over-quick to be sure of anything that suits your ownfancy, dearest," answered Fareham, watching them to the curve of theavenue; "but I see no signs of favour to that solemn youth in your sister.She suffers his attentions out of pure civility. He is an accomplishedhorseman, having given all his life to learning how to jump a fencegracefully; and his company is at least better than a groom's."

  "How scornfully you jeer at him!"

  "Oh, I have no more scorn than the Cavalier's natural contempt for theRoundhead. A hereditary hatred, perhaps."

  "You say such hard things of his Majesty that one might often take you tobe of Sir Denzil's way of thinking."

  "I never think about the King. I only wonder. I may sometimes express mywonderment too freely for a loyal subject."

  "I cannot vouch for Angela, but I will wager that he is deep in love,"persisted Hyacinth.

  "Have it your own way, sweetheart. He is dull enough to be deep in debt, orlove, or politics, anything dismal and troublesome," answered his lordship,as he strolled off with his spaniels; not those dainty toy dogs which hadbeen his companions at the gate of death, but the fine liver-and-blackshooting dogs that lived in the kennels, and thought it doghood's highestprivilege to attend their lord in his walks, whether with or without a gun.

  * * * * *

  His lordship kept open Christmas that year at Chilton Abbey, and therewas great festivity, chiefly devised and carried out by the household,as Fareham and his wife were too much of the modern fashion, and toocosmopolitan in their ideas, to appreciate the fuss and feasting of anEnglish Christmas. They submitted, however, to the festival as arranged forthem by Mr. Manningtree and Mrs. Hubbuck--the copious feasting for servantsand dependents, the mummers and carolsingers, the garlands and greenerywhich disguised the fine old tapestry, and made a bower of the vaultedhall. Everything was done with a lavish plenteousness, and no doubt thehousehold enjoyed the fun and feasting all the more because of thatdismal season of a few years back, when all Christmas ceremonies had beendenounced as idolatrous, and when the members of the Anglican Church hadassembled for their Christmas service secretly in private houses, and asmuch under the ban of the law as the Nonconformists were now.

  Angela was interested in everything in that bright world where all thingswere new. The children piping Christmas hymns in the clear cold morningenchanted her. She ran down to kiss and fondle the smaller among them, andfinding them thinly clad promised to make them warm cloaks and hoods asfast as her fingers could sew. Denzil found her there in the wide snowyspace before the porch, prattling with the children, bare-headed, her softbrown hair blown about in the wind; and he was moved, as a man must needsbe moved by the aspect of the woman that he loves caressing a small child,melted almost to tears by the thought that in some blessed time to come shemight so caress, only more warmly, a child whose existence should be theirbond of union.

  And yet, being both shy and somewhat cold of temperament, he restrainedhimself, and greeted her only as a friend; for his mother's influence washolding him back, urging him not to marry a Papist, were she ever so lovelyor lovable.

  He had known Angela for nearly three months, and his acquaintance with herhad reached this point of intimacy, yet Lady Warner had never seen her.This fact distressed him, and he had tried hard to awaken his mother'sinterest by praises of the Fareham family and of Angela's exquisitecharacter; but the Scarlet Spectre came between the Puritan lady and thehouse of Fareham.

  "There is nothing you can tell me about this girl, upon whom I fear youhave foolishly set your affection, which can make me forget that she hasbeen nursed and swaddled in the bondage of a corrupt Church, taught toworship idols, and to cherish lying traditions, while the light of God'sholy word has been made dark for her."

  "She is young enough to embrace a purer creed, and to walk by the clearerlight that leads your footsteps, mother. If she were my wife I should notdespair of winning her to think as we do."

  "And in all the length of England was there no young woman of rightprinciples fit to be thy wife, that thou must needs fall into the snare ofthe first Popish witch who set her lure for thee?"

  "Popish witch! Oh, mother, how ill you can conceive the image of my dearlove, who has no witchcraft but beauty, no charm so potent as her truth andinnocency!"

  "I know them--these children of the Scarlet Woman--and I know their works,and the fate of those who trust them. The late King--weak and stubbornas he was--might have been alive this day, and reigning over a contentedpeople, but for that fair witch who ruled him. It was the Frenchwoman'ssorceries that wrought Charles's ruin."

  "If thou wouldst but see my Angela," pleaded the son, with a caressing armabout his mother's spare shoulders.

  "Thine! What! is she thine--pledged and promised already? Then, indeed,these white hairs will go down with sorrow to the grave."

  "Mother, I doubt if thou couldst find so much as a single grey hair in thatcomely head of thine," said the son; and the mother smiled in the midst ofher affliction.

  "And as for promise--there has been none. I have said no word of love; norhave I been encouraged to speak by any token of liking on the lady's part.I stand aloof and admire, and wonder at so much modesty and intelligence inLady Fareham's sister. Let me bring her to see you, mother?"

  "This is your house, Denzil. Were you to fill it with the sons anddaughters of Belial, I could but pray that your eyes might be openedto their iniquity. I could not shut these doors against you or yourcompanions. But I want no Popish women here."

  "Ah, you do not know! Wait until you have seen her," urged Denzil, with thelover's confidence in the omnipotence of his mistress's charms.

  And now on this Christmas Day there came the opportunity Denzil had beenwaiting for. The weather was cold and bright, the
landscape was blotted outwith snow; and the lake in Chilton Park offered a sound surface for theexercise of that novel amusement of skating, an accomplishment which LordFareham had acquired while in the Low Countries, and in which he hadbeen Denzil's instructor during the late severe weather. Angela, at herbrother-in-law's entreaty, had also adventured herself upon a pair ofskates, and had speedily found delight in the swift motion, which seemedto her like the flight of a bird skimming the steely surface of the frozenlake, and incomparable in enjoyment.

  "It is even more delightful than a gallop on Zephyr," she told her sister,who stood on the bank with a cluster of gay company, watching the skaters.

  "I doubt not that; since there is even more danger of getting your neckbroken upon runaway skates than on a runaway horse," answered Hyacinth.

  After an hour on the lake, in which Denzil had distinguished himself by hismastery of the new exercise, being always at hand to support his mistressat the slightest indication of peril, she consented to the removal of herskates, at Papillon's earnest entreaty, who wanted her aunt to walk withher before dinner. After dinner there would be the swift-coming Decembertwilight, and Christmas games, snap-dragon and the like, which Papillon,although a little fine lady, reproducing all her mother's likes anddislikes in miniature, could not, as a human child, altogether disregard.

  "I don't care about such nonsense as Georgie does," she told her aunt,with condescending reference to her brother; "but I like to see the othersamused. Those village children are such funny little savages. They sticktheir fingers in their mouths and grin at me, and call me 'Your annar,' or'Your worship,' and say 'Anan' to everything. They are like Audrey in theplay you read to me."

  Denzil was in attendance upon aunt and niece.

  "If you want to come with us, you must invent a pretty walk, Sir Denzil,"said Papillon. "I am tired of long lanes and ploughed fields."

  "I know of one of the pleasantest rambles in the shire--across the woodsto the Grange. And we can rest there for half an hour, if Mrs. Angela willallow us, and take a light refreshment."

  "Dear Sir Denzil, that is the very thing," answered Papillon, breathlessly."I am dying of hunger. And I don't want to go back to the Abbey. Will therebe any cakes or mince pies at the Grange?"

  "Cakes in plenty, but I fear there will be no mince pies. My mother doesnot love Christmas dainties."

  Henriette wanted to know why. She was always wanting the reason of things.A bright inquiring little mind, perpetually on the alert for novelty; animitative brain like a monkey's; hands and feet that know not rest; andthere you have the Honourable Henrietta Maria Revel, _alias_ Papillon.

  They crossed the river, Angela and Denzil each taking an oar, whilePapillon pretended to steer, a process which she effected chiefly byscreaming.

  "Another lump of ice!" she shrieked. "We shall be swamped. I believe theriver will be frozen before Twelfth Night, and we shall be able to danceupon it. We must have bonfires and roast an ox for the poor people. Mrs.Hubbuck told me they roasted an ox the year King Charles was beheaded.Horrid brutes--to think that they could eat at such a time! If they hadbeen sorry they could not have relished roast beef."

  Hadley Grange, commonly known as the Grange, was in every detail theantithesis of Chilton Abbey. At the Abbey the eye was dazzled, the mind wasbewildered, by an excess of splendour--an over-much of everything gorgeousor beautiful. At the Grange sight and mind were rested by the low tone ofcolour, the quaker-like precision of form. All the furniture in the housewas Elizabethan, plain, ponderous, the conscientious work of Oxfordshiremechanics. On one side of the house there was a bowling green, on theother a physic garden, where odours of medicinal herbs, camomile, fennel,rosemary, rue, hung ever on the surrounding air. There was nothing modernin Lady Warner's house but the spotless cleanliness; the perfume of lastsummer's roses and lavender; the polished surface of tables and cabinets,oak chests and oak floors, testifying to the inexorable industry of rustichousemaids. In all other respects the Grange was like a house that had justawakened from a century of sleep.

  Lady Warner rose from her high-backed chair by the chimney corner in theoak parlour, and laid aside the book she had been reading, to welcome herson, startled at seeing him followed by a tall, fair girl in a black mantleand hood, and a little slip of a thing, with bright dark eyes and smalldetermined face, pert, pointed, interrogative, framed in swansdown--a smallaerial figure in a white cloth cloak, and a scarlet brocade frock, underwhich two little red shoes danced into the room.

  "Mother, I have brought Mrs. Angela Kirkland and her niece to visit youthis Christmas morning."

  "Mrs. Kirkland and her niece are welcome," and Lady Warner made a deepcurtsy, not like one of Lady Fareham's sinking curtseys, as of one nearswooning in an ecstasy of politeness, but dignified and inflexible,straight down and straight up again.

  "But as for Christmas, 'tis one of those superstitious observances which Ihave ever associated with a Church I abhor."

  Denzil reddened furiously. To have brought this upon his beloved!

  Angela drew herself up, and paled at the unexpected assault. The brutalityof it was startling, though she knew, from Denzil's opinions, that hismother must be an enemy of her faith.

  "Indeed, madam, I am sorry that anybody in England should think it an illthing to celebrate the birthday of our Redeemer and Lord," she said.

  "Do you think, young lady, that foolish romping games, and huge chines ofbeef, and smoking ale made luscious with spices and roasted pippins, andcarol-singing and play-acting, can be the proper honouring of Him who wasGod first and for ever, and Man only for one brief interval in His eternalexistence? To keep God's birthday with drunken rioting! What blasphemy! Ifyou can think that there is not more profaneness than piety in such sensualrevelries--why, it is that you do not know how to think. You would havelearnt to reason better had you known that sweet poet and musician, andtrue thinker, Mr. John Milton, with whom it was my privilege to conversefrequently during my husband's lifetime, and afterwards when hecondescended to accept my son for his pupil, and spent three days andnights under this roof."

  "Mr. Milton is still at Chalfont, mother. So you may hope to see him againwith a less journey than to London," said Denzil, seizing the first chanceof a change in the conversation; "and here is a little Miss to whom I havepromised a light collation, with some of your Jersey milk."

  "Mistress Kirkland and her niece shall have the best I can provide. Thelarder will furnish something acceptable, I doubt not, although I and myhousehold observe this day as a fast."

  "What, madam, are you sorry that Jesus Christ was born to-day?" askedPapillon.

  "I am sorry for my sins, little mistress, and for the sins of all mankind,which nothing but His blood could wash away. To remember His birth is toremember that He died for us; and that is why I spend the twenty-fifth ofDecember in fasting and prayer."

  "Are you not glad you are to dine at the Abbey to-day, Sir Denzil?" askedPapillon, by way of commentary.

  "Nay, I put no restraint on my son. He can serve God after his own manner,and veer with every wind of passion or fancy, if he will. But you shallhave your cake and draught of milk, little lady, and you too, MistressKirkland, will, I hope, taste our Jersey milk, unless you would prefer aglass of Malmsey wine."

  "Mrs. Kirkland is as much an anchorite as yourself, mother. She takes nowine."

  Lady Warner was the soul of hospitality, and particularly proud of herdairy. When kept clear of theology and politics she was not an ill-naturedwoman. But to be a Puritan in the year of the Five Mile Act was not tothink kindly of the Government under which she lived; while her sense ofher own wrongs was intensified by rumours of over-indulgence shown toPapists, and the broad assertion that King and Duke were Roman Catholic atheart, and waited only the convenient hour to reforge the fetters that hadbound England to Rome.

  She was fond of children, most of all of little girls, never having had adaughter. She bent down to kiss Henriette, and then turned to Angela withher kindest smile-
-

  "And this is Lady Fareham's daughter? She is as pretty as a picture."

  "And I am as good as a picture--sometimes, madam," chirped Papillon."Mother says I am _douce comme un image._"

  "When thou hast been silent or still for five minutes," said Angela, "andthat is but seldom."

  A loud hand-bell summoned the butler, and an Arcadian meal was speedily setout on a table in the hall, where a great fire of logs burnt as merrily asif it had been designed to enliven a Christmas-keeping household. Indeedthere was nothing miserly or sparing about the housekeeping at the Grange,which harmonised with the sombre richness of Lady Warner's greybrocade gown, from the old-fashioned silk mercer's at the sign of theFlower-de-luce, in Cheapside. There was liberality without waste, and acertain quiet refinement in every detail, which reminded Angela of theconvent parlour and her aunt's room--and contrasted curiously with theelegant disorder of her sister's surroundings.

  Papillon clapped her hands at sight of the large plum cake, the jug ofmilk, and bowl of blackberry conserve.

  "I was so hungry," she said, apologetically, after Denzil had supplied herwith generous slices of cake, and large spoonfuls of jam. "I did not knowthat Nonconformists had such nice things to eat."

  "Did you think we all lay in gaol to suffer cold and hunger for the faiththat is in us, like that poor preacher at Bedford?" asked Lady Warner,bitterly. "It will come to that some day, perhaps, under the new Act."

  "Will you show Mistress Kirkland your house, mother, and your dairy?"Denzil asked hurriedly. "I know she would like to see one of the neatestdairies in Oxfordshire."

  No request could be more acceptable to Lady Warner, who was a housekeeperfirst and a controversialist afterwards. Inclined as she was to railagainst the Church of Rome--partly because she had made up her mind uponhearsay, chiefly Miltonian, that Roman Catholicism was only another namefor image-worship and martyr-burning, and partly on account of the favourthat had been shown to Papists, as compared with the cruel treatment ofNonconformists--still there was a charm in Angela's gentle beauty againstwhich the daughterless matron could not steel her heart. She melted in thespace of a quarter of an hour, while Denzil was encouraging Henriette toover-eat herself, and trying to persuade Angela to taste this or thatdainty, or reproaching her for taking so little; and by the time the childhad finished her copious meal, Lady Warner was telling herself how dearlyshe might have loved this girl for a daughter-in-law, were it not for thatfatal objection of a corrupt and pernicious creed.

  No! Lovely as she was, modest, refined, and in all things worthy to beloved, the question of creed must be a stumbling-block. And then there wereother objections. Rural gossip, the loose talk of servants, had brought ahighly coloured description of Lady Fareham's household to her neighbour'sears. The extravagant splendour, the waste and idleness, the late hours,the worship of pleasure, the visiting, the singing, and dancing, andjunketing, and worst of all, the too-indulgent friendship shown to aParisian fopling, had formed the subject of conversation in many anassembly of pious ladies, and hands and eyebrows had been uplifted at theiniquities of Chilton Abbey, as second only to the monstrous goings-on ofthe Court at Oxford.

  Almost ever since the Restoration Lady Warner had been living in meekexpectancy of fire from heaven; and the chastisement of this memorable yearhad seemed to her the inevitable realisation of her fears. The fiery rainhad come down--impalpable, invisible, leaving its deadly tokens in burningplague spots, the forerunners of death. That the contagion had mostlyvisited that humbler class of persons who had been strangers to theexcesses and pleasures of the Court made nothing against Lady Warner'sconviction that this scourge was Heaven's vengeance upon fashionable vice.Her son had brought her stories of the life at Whitehall, terrible picturesof iniquity, conveyed in the scathing words of one who sat apart, in ahumble lodging, where for him the light of day came not, and heard withdisgust and horror of that wave of debauchery which had swept over the cityhe loved, since the triumph of the Royalists. And Lady Warner had heard thewords of Milton, and had listened with a reverence as profound as if theblind poet had been the prophet of Israel, alone in his place of hiding,holding himself aloof from an idolatrous monarch and a wicked people.

  And now her son had brought her this fair girl, upon whom he had set hisfoolish hopes, a Papist, and the sister of a woman whose ways were theways of--! A favourite scriptural substantive closed the sentence in LadyWarner's mind.

  No; it might not be. Whatever power she had over her son must be usedagainst his Papistical syren. She would treat her with courtesy, show herhouse and dairy, and there an end. And so they repaired to the offices,with Papillon running backwards and forwards as they went along, exclaimingand questioning, delighted with the shining oak floors and great oak chestsin the corridor, and the armour in the hall, where, as the sacred andcentral object, hung the breastplate Sir George Warner wore when he fell atHopton Heath, dinted by sword and pike, as the enemy's horse rode him downin the _melee_. His orange scarf, soiled and torn, was looped across thesteel cuirass. Papillon admired everything, most of all the great cooldairy, which had once been a chapel, and where the piscina was converted toa niche for a polished brass milk-can, to the horror of Angela, who couldsay no word in praise of a place that had been created by the profanationof holy things. A chapel turned into a storehouse for milk and butter! Wasthis how Protestants valued consecrated places? An awe-stricken silencecame upon her, and she was glad when Denzil remembered that they would havebarely time to walk back to the Abbey before the two o'clock dinner.

  "You keep Court hours even in the country," said Lady Warner. "I dined halfan hour before you came."

  "I don't care if I have no dinner to-day," said Papillon; "but I hope Ishall be able to eat a mince pie. Why don't you love mince pies, madam?He"--pointing to Denzil--"says you do not."