, and who assumed much
authority in her mistress's absence, laid her orders upon Deborah, the
governante, immediately to carry the children to their airing in the
park, and not to let any one enter the gilded chamber, which was
usually their sporting-place. Deborah, who often rebelled, and sometimes
successfully, against the deputed authority of Ellesmere, privately
resolved that it was about to rain, and that the gilded chamber was a
more suitable place for the children's exercise than the wet grass of
the park on a raw morning.

But a woman's brain is sometimes as inconstant as a popular assembly;
and presently after she had voted the morning was like to be rainy,
and that the gilded chamber was the fittest play-room for the children,
Mistress Deborah came to the somewhat inconsistent resolution, that the
park was the fittest place for her own morning walk. It is certain,
that during the unrestrained joviality of the preceding evening, she had
danced till midnight with Lance Outram the park-keeper; but how far the
seeing him just pass the window in his woodland trim, with a feather in
his hat, and a crossbow under his arm, influenced the discrepancy of the
opinions Mistress Deborah formed concerning the weather, we are far
from presuming to guess. It is enough for us, that, so soon as Mistress
Ellesmere's back was turned, Mistress Deborah carried the children into
the gilded chamber, not without a strict charge (for we must do her
justice) to Master Julian to take care of his little wife, Mistress
Alice; and then, having taken so satisfactory a precaution, she herself
glided into the park by the glass-door of the still-room, which was
nearly opposite to the great breach.

The gilded chamber in which the children were, by this arrangement,
left to amuse themselves, without better guardianship than what Julian's
manhood afforded, was a large apartment, hung with stamped Spanish
leather, curiously gilded, representing, in a manner now obsolete, but
far from unpleasing, a series of tilts and combats betwixt the Saracens
of Grenada, and the Spaniards under the command of King Ferdinand and
Queen Isabella, during that memorable siege, which was terminated by the
overthrow of the last fragments of the Moorish empire in Spain.

The little Julian was careering about the room for the amusement of his
infant friend, as well as his own, mimicking with a reed the menacing
attitude of the Abencerrages and Zegris engaged in the Ea