Almost from the hour in which her sex was announced, the King had

promised the Baron de Ribaumont that she should be the wife of his

young son, and that all the possessions of the house should be

settled upon the little couple, engaging to provide for the

Chevalier's disappointed heir in some commandery of 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.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024