ger's
return, now deferred so much beyond all reasonable expectation.

Sir Marmaduke, with a free heart, betook himself to the house, dreading
to find that Lucy had fallen under the objurgations of her step-mother,
but feeling impelled to stand her protector, and guided to the spot by
the high key of Dame Annora's voice.

He found Lucy--who, on the race occasions when good-natured Lady
Thistlewood was really angry with her, usually cowered meekly--now
standing her ground, and while the dame was pausing for breath, he heard
her gentle voice answering steadily, 'No, madam, to him I could never
owe faith, nor troth, nor love, save such as I have for Philip.'

'Then it is very unfeeling and ungrateful of you. Nor did you think so
once, but it is all his scars and---'

By this time Sir Marmaduke had come near enough to put his arm round
his daughter, and say, 'No such thing, dame. It had been unseemly in the
lass had it been otherwise. She is a good girl and a discreet; and the
Frenchman, if he has made none of their vows, feels as bound as though
he had. He's an honest fellow, thinking of his studies and not of ladies
or any such trumpery. So give me a kiss, Lucy girl, and thou shalt study
_Jam satis_, or any other jam he pleases, without more to vex thee.'

Lucy, now that the warfare was over, had begun to weep so profusely that
so soon as her father released her, she turned, made a mute gesture to
ask permission to depart, and hurried away; while Lady Thistlewood,
who disliked above all that her husband should think her harsh to
her step-children, began to relate the exceeding tenderness of the
remonstrance which had been followed with such disproportionate floods
of tears.

Poor Sir Marmaduke hoped at least that the veil of night had put an end
to the subject which harassed him at a time when he felt less capable
than usual of bearing vexation, for he was yearning sadly after his only
son. The youths had been absent ten months, and had not been heard of
for more than three, when they were just leaving Paris in search of the
infant. Sir Francis Walsingham, whose embassy had ended with the death
of Charles IX., knew nothing of them, and great apprehensions respecting
them were beginning to prevail, and, to Sir Marmaduke especially, seemed
to be eating out the peace and joy of his life. Philip, always at his
father's side ever since he could run alone, was missed at every visit
to stable or kennel; the ring of his che