he twenty-four hours round
without moving.

CHAPTER XXI: EXILE

"'Oh, who are ye, young man?' she said.
'What country come ye frae?'
'I flew across the sea,' he said;
''Twas but this very day.'"

Old Ballad.

Five months had passed away since the midnight flight from England,
when Anne Woodford was sitting on a stone bench flanked with statues
in the stately gardens of the Palace of St. Germain, working away at
some delicate point lace, destined to cover some of the deficiencies
of her dress, for her difficulties were great, and these months had
been far from happy ones.

The King was in Ireland, the Queen spent most of the time of his
absence in convents, either at Poissy or Chaillot, carrying her son
with her to be the darling of the nuns, who had for the most part
never even seen a baby, and to whom a bright lively child of a year
old was a perfect treasure of delight. Not wishing to encumber the
good Sisters with more attendants than were needful, the Queen only
took with her one lady governess, one nurse, and one rocker, and
this last naturally was Pauline Dunord, both a Frenchwoman and a
Roman Catholic.

This was in itself no loss to Anne. Her experience of the nunnery
at Boulogne, where had been spent three days in expectation of the
King, had not been pleasant. The nuns had shrunk from her as a
heretic, and kept their novices and pensionnaires from the taint of
communication with her; and all the honour she might have deserved
for the Queen's escape seemed to have been forfeited by that moment
of fear, which in the telling had become greatly exaggerated.

It was true that the Queen had never alluded to it; but probably
through Mrs. Labadie, it had become current that Miss Woodford had
been so much alarmed under the churchyard wall that her fancy had
conjured up a phantom and she had given a loud scream, which but for
the mercy of the Saints would have betrayed them all.

Anne was persuaded that she had done nothing worse than give an
involuntary start, but it was not of the least use to say so, and
she began to think that perhaps others knew better than she did.
Miss Dunord, who had never been more than distantly polite to her in
England, was of course more thrown with her at St. Germain, and
examined her closely. Who was it? What was it? Had she seen it
before? It was of no use to deny. Pauline knew she had seen
something on that All Saints' Eve. Was it true that it was a lover
of h