vin noble, who had fallen under the royal displeasure,
and they had enjoyed court favour up to the present generation, when
Henri II., either from opposition to his father, instinct for honesty,
or both, had become a warm friend to the gay and brilliant young Baron
de Ribaumont, head of the white or elder branch of the family.

The family contention seemed likely to wear out of its own accord,
for the Count de Ribaumont was an elderly and childless man, and his
brother, the Chevalier de Ribaumont, was, according to the usual lot
of French juniors, a bachelor, so that it was expected that the whole
inheritance would centre upon the elder family. However, to the general
surprise, the Chevalier late in life married, and became the father of a
son and daughter; but soon after calculations were still more thrown out
by the birth of a little daughter in the old age of the Count.

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 in