'Nothing can be better,' exclaimed his mother. 'How I have longed

to free him from that little shrew, whose tricks were the plague of

my life! Now there is nothing between him and a worthy match!'

'We can make an Englishman of him now to the backbone,' added Sir

Marmaduke, 'and it is well that it should be the lady herself who

wants first to be off with it, so that none can say he has played

her a scurvy trick.'

'What say you, Berenger?' said Lord Walwyn. 'Listen to me, fair

nephew. You know that all my remnant of hope is fixed upon you,

and that I have looked to setting you in the room of the son of my

own; and I think that under our good Queen you will find it easier

to lead a quiet God-fearing life than in your father's vexed

country, where the Reformed religion lies under persecution.

Natheless, being a born liegeman of the King of France, and heir to

estates in his kingdom, meseemeth that before you are come to years

of discretion it were well that you should visit them, and become

better able to judge for yourself how to deal in this matter when

you shall have attained full age, and may be able to dispose of

them by sale, thus freeing yourself from allegiance to a foreign

prince. And at the same time you can take measures, in concert

with this young lady, for loosing the wedlock so unhappily

contracted.'

'O sir, sir!' cried Lady Thistlewood, 'send him not to France to be

burnt by the Papists!'

'Peace, daughter,' returned her mother. 'Know you not that there

is friendship between the court party and the Huguenots, and that

the peace is to be sealed by the marriage of the King's sister with

the King of Navarre? This is the most suitable time at which he

could go.'

'Then, madam,' proceeded the lady, 'he will be running about to all

the preachings on every bleak moor and wet morass he can find,

catching his death with rheums, like his poor father.'

There was a general smile, and Sir Marmaduke laughed outright.

'Nay, dame,' he said, 'have you marked such a greed of sermons in

our Berry that you should fear his so untowardly running after

them?'

'Tilly-vally, Sir Duke,' quoth Dame Annora, with a flirt of her

fan, learnt at the French court. 'Men will run after a preacher in

a marshy bog out of pure forwardness, when they will nod at a godly

homily on a well-stuffed bench between four walls.'




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