The Nest of the Sparrowhawk | Page 8

fame had reached you,
mistress."
"A French prince?--in this village?" exclaimed Dame Harrison sharply,
"and pray, good Sir Marmaduke, where did you go a-fishing to get such
a bite?"
"Nay!" replied Sir Marmaduke with a short laugh, "I had naught to do
with his coming; he wandered to Acol from Dover about six months
ago it seems, and found refuge in the Lamberts' cottage, where he has
remained ever since. A queer fellow I believe. I have only seen him
once or twice in my fields ... in the evening, usually ..."
Perhaps there was just a curious note of irritability in Sir Marmaduke's
voice as he spoke of this mysterious inhabitant of the quiet village of
Acol; certain it is that the two matchmaking old dames seemed smitten
at one and the same time with a sense of grave danger to their schemes.

An exile from France, a prince who hides his identity and his person in
a remote Kentish village, and a girl with a highly imaginative
temperament like Lady Sue! here was surely a more definite, a more
important rival to the pretensions of homely country youths like Sir
Timothy Harrison or Squire Pyncheon, than even the student of humble
origin whose brother was a blacksmith, whose aunt was a Quakeress,
and who wandered about the park of Acol with hollow eyes fixed
longingly on the much-courted heiress.
Dame Harrison and Mistress Pyncheon both instinctively turned a
scrutinizing gaze on her ladyship. Neither of them was perhaps
ordinarily very observant, but self-interest had made them keen, and it
would have been impossible not to note the strange atmosphere which
seemed suddenly to pervade the entire personality of the young girl.
There was nothing in her face now expressive of whole-hearted
partisanship for an absent friend, such as she had displayed when she
felt that young Lambert was being unjustly sneered at; rather was it a
kind of entranced and arrested thought, as if her mind, having come in
contact with one all-absorbing idea, had ceased to function in any other
direction save that one.
Her cheeks no longer glowed, they seemed pale and transparent like
those of an ascetic; her lips were slightly parted, her eyes appeared
unconscious of everything round her, and gazing at something
enchanting beyond that bank of clouds which glimmered, snow-white,
through the trees.
"But what in the name of common sense is a French prince doing in
Acol village?" ejaculated Dame Harrison in her most strident voice,
which had the effect of drawing every one's attention to herself and to
Sir Marmaduke, whom she was thus addressing.
The men ceased playing and gathered nearer. The spell was broken.
That strange and mysterious look vanished from Lady Sue's face; she
turned away from the speakers and idly plucked a few bunches of acorn
from an overhanging oak.

"Of a truth," replied Sir Marmaduke, whose eyes were still steadily
fixed on his ward, "I know as little about the fellow, ma'am, as you do
yourself. He was exiled from France by King Louis for political
reasons, so he explained to the old woman Lambert, with whom he is
still lodging. I understand that he hardly ever sleeps at the cottage, that
his appearances there are short and fitful and that his ways are passing
mysterious.... And that is all I know," he added in conclusion, with a
careless shrug of the shoulders.
"Quite a romance!" remarked Mistress Pyncheon dryly.
"You should speak to him, good Sir Marmaduke," said Dame Harrison
decisively, "you are a magistrate. 'Tis your duty to know more of this
fellow and his antecedents."
"Scarcely that, ma'am," rejoined Sir Marmaduke, "you understand ... I
have a young ward living for the nonce in my house ... she is very rich,
and, I fear me, of a very romantic disposition ... I shall try to get the
man removed from hence, but until that is accomplished, I prefer to
know nothing about him ..."
"How wise of you, good Sir Marmaduke!" quoth Mistress Pyncheon
with a sigh of content.
A sentiment obviously echoed in the hearts of a good many people
there present.
"One knows these foreign adventurers," concluded Sir Marmaduke
with pleasant irony, "with their princely crowns and forlorn causes ...
half a million of English money would no doubt regild the former and
bolster up the latter."
He rose from his seat as he spoke, boldly encountering even as he did
so, a pair of wrathful and contemptuous girlish eyes fixed steadily upon
him.
"Shall we go within?" he said, addressing his guests, and returning his
young ward's gaze haughtily, even commandingly; "a cup of

sack-posset will be welcome after the fatigue of the game. Will you
honor my poor house, mistress? and you, too, ma'am? Gentlemen, you
must fight among yourselves for