"Do you mean Lady Jane Grey, aunt?"
"No, my dear; my heroine had numbered more years than the poor young creature of whom you are thinking."
"Was she a queen?"
"She had been."
"Then I can tell you; she was the divorced wife of a king of England. Do please, Louisa, make haste, and we can have one more anecdote before tea, although we were so late in beginning."
"I must not hurry my story too much, or you will not be able to guess it. Picture to yourselves a garden, which in the days I speak of would have been considered a beautiful specimen of horticulture, but which we should now think stiff and formal; the long, straight, broad walks, however, present an appearance of grandeur, which we see in none of the present day. A pulpit had been placed among the green boughs, from which a holy and venerable man is preaching to a small congregation; in the centre of the group is a young man, so attentively listening that hours have past away, and he is not yet tired. His countenance is remarkably attractive and beautiful, especially his eyes, whilst religious reverence for the doctrine he hears, is shewn in his whole deportment."
"Going to church in the open air!" exclaimed Alfred; "I am very glad, mama, that you do not take me to a beautiful garden every Sunday; I am afraid I should watch the birds and butterflies instead of listening."
"I trust, my dear child," replied his mother, "that in these happier days, we may never know the privation of not having a house of God to enter."
"Could not this young gentleman find one, mama?"
"Not so easily as we could; the religion we profess was not then so firmly established, although Louisa's hero did all in his power to spread it throughout his dominions. But I believe his habit of attending Latimer in the royal garden, was from preferring the open air to the more confined atmosphere of a chapel."