My father and brothers went half-way down
the stairs to meet them, my mother advanced across the room, holding
me in one hand and Annora in the other. We all curtsied low, and as
the gentlemen advanced, bowing low, and almost sweeping the ground
with the plumes in their hats, we each had to offer them a cheek to
salute after the English fashion. The old marquis was talking French
so fast that I could not understand him in the least, but somehow a
mist suddenly seemed to clear away from before me, and I found that I
was standing before that alarming table, not with him, but with
something much younger--not much older, indeed, than Eustace.
I began to hear what the notary was reading out, and behold it was--
'Contract of marriage on the part of Philippe Marie Francois de
Bellaise, Marquis de Nidermerle, and Eustace de Ribaumont, Baron
Walwyn of Walwyn, in Dorset, and Baron de Ribaumont in Picardy, on
behoof of Gaspard Henri Philippe, Viscount de Bellaise, nephew of the
Marquis de Nidemerle, and Margaret Henrietta Maria de Ribaumont,
daughter of the Baron de Ribaumont.'
Then I knew that I had been taken in by the Prince's wicked trick,
and that my husband was to be the young viscount, not the old uncle!
I do not think that this was much comfort to me at the moment, for,
all the same, I was going into a strange country, away from every one
I had ever known.
But I did take courage to look up under my eye-lashes at the form I
was to see with very different eyes.
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