The Chaplet of Pearls | Page 4

a religious order of
knighthood.
The Baron's wife was English. He had, when on a visit to his English
kindred, entirely turned the head of the lovely Annora Walwyn, and
finding that her father, one of the gravest of Tudor statesmen, would
not hear of her breaking her engagement to the honest Dorset squire
Marmaduke Thistlewood, he had carried her off by a stolen marriage
and coup de main, which, as her beauty, rank, and inheritance were all
considerable, had won him great reputation at the gay court of Henri
II.
Infants as the boy and girl were, the King had hurried on their

marriage to secure its taking place in the lifetime of the Count. The
Countess had died soon after the birth of the little girl, and if the
arrangement were to take effect at all, it must be before she should fall
under the guardianship of her uncle, the Chevalier. Therefore the King
had caused her to be brought up from the cottage in Anjou, where she
had been nursed, and in person superintended the brilliant wedding.
He himself led off the dance with the tiny bride, conducting her through
its mazes with fatherly kindliness and condescension; but Queen
Catherine, who was strongly in the interests of the Angevin branch, and
had always detested the Baron as her husband's intimate, excused
herself from dancing with the bridegroom. He therefore fell to the
share of the Dauphiness Queen of Scots, a lovely, bright-eyed, laughing
girl, who so completely fascinated the little fellow, that he convulsed
the court by observing that he should not have objected to be married
to some one like her, instead of a little baby like Eustacie.
Amid all the mirth, it was not only the Chevalier and the Queen who
bore displeased looks. In truth, both were too great adepts in court life
to let their dissatisfaction appear. The gloomiest face was that of him
whose triumph it was--the bridegroom's father, the Baron de
Ribaumont. He had suffered severely from the sickness that prevailed
in St. Quentin, when in the last August the Admiral de Coligny had
been besieged there by the Spaniards, and all agreed that he had never
been the same man since, either in health or in demeanour. When he
came back from his captivity and found the King bent on crowning his
return by the marriage of the children, he had hung back, spoken of
scruples about such unconscious vows, and had finally only consented
under stress of the personal friendship of the King, and on condition
that he and his wife should at once have the sole custody of the little
bride. Even then he moved about the gay scene with so distressed and
morose an air that he was evidently either under the influence of a
scruple of conscience or of a foreboding of evil.
No one doubted that it had been the latter, when, three days later,
Henri II., in the prime of his strength and height of his spirits,
encountered young Des Lorges in the lists, received the splinter of a
lance in his eye, and died two days afterwards.

No sooner were his obsequies over than the Baron de Ribaumont set off
with his wife and the little bridal pair for his castle of Leurre, in
Normandy, nor was he ever seen at court again.
CHAPTER II.
THE SEPARATION

Parted without the least regret, Except that they had ever met. * * * *
Misses, the tale that I relate, This lesson seems to carry: Choose not
alone a proper mate, But proper time to marry! COWPER, PAIRING
TIME ANTICIPATED
'I will have it!'
'Thou shalt not have it!'
'Diane says it is mine.'
'Diane knows nothing about it.'
'Gentlemen always yield to ladies.'
'Wives ought to mind their husbands.'
'Then I will not be thy wife.'
'Thou canst not help it.'
'I will. I will tell my father what M. le Baron reads and sings, and then I
know he will.'
'And welcome.'
Eustacie put out her lip, and began to cry.
The 'husband and wife,' now eight and seven years old, were in a large

room hung with tapestry, representing the history of Tobit. A great
state bed, curtained with piled velvet, stood on a sort of dais at the
further end; there was a toilet-table adorned with curiously shaped
boxes, and coloured Venetian glasses, and filagree pouncet-boxes, and
with a small mirror whose frame was inlaid with gold and ivory. A
large coffer, likewise inlaid, stood against the wall, and near it a
cabinet, of Dutch workmanship, a combination of ebony, ivory, wood,
and looking-glass, the centre retreating, and so arranged that by the
help of most ingenious attention to perspective and reflection, it
appeared like the entrance to a magnificent miniature cinque-cento
palace,