with an eye
can see how beautiful that is. There is something regal in the ornament
of it. The slender stem seems to grow as it expands into the bowl, the
chasing is so simple and yet so firm and grand, the handles are like
curves of the lip of the cup itself, as though they were a part of the
whole design, and not as though they were stuck on as they would be in
modern works. I could fancy it the wine-cup of a king or an emperor."

We had none of us seen this handsome goblet before, as it was usually
locked up with other silver in a chest that stood in a wardrobe closet
in Miss Grantley's bed-room. The fact is, we were all looking at it with
some curiosity, for it had been brought down with the tea-spoons and
sugar-tongs, and now stood on the table filled with pounded sugar for
the strawberries that were to be eaten by and by.

"Is it an heirloom, Miss Grantley?" asked Marian Cooper. "Has it always
belonged to you, and did some ancestor leave you the history of it?"

"Well, it has been in our family--in my mother's family--for perhaps two
centuries," replied our governess with her grave gentle smile.

"You know that my mother, or at all events my great grandmother,
belonged to the Huguenots, those French Protestants, many of whom
escaped from the persecutions in France and came to England, where they
worked at many trades. A number of these _emigres_, as they were called,
settled in a neighbourhood close to the city of London; a place called
Saint Mary Spital. The part that they lived in was named the Spital
Fields, and there they set up in business as weavers of silk. This cup
came to my dear mother as a part of the old property that belonged to
her grandmother, and it had been brought from the south of France, from
the district where the persecution was carried on longest till the
French revolution changed everything. The 'Reign of Terror,' as it was
called, brought a terrible punishment to those who had themselves shown
no mercy; and another kind of persecution to those who, rather than deny
their religion, had endured the cruelties of a fierce soldiery. They had
seen houses burned, even women and children tortured and killed,
property destroyed, and existence made so hard and sorrowful that they
ceased to fear death, and fought on with desperate courage, or abandoned
the country that their tyrants had turned into a desert, and carried
their arts and manufactures to other lands where they might meet and
pray in p