"What unparalleled misfortunes have been hers!" said the Rector. "And the Duchesse de Berry?"
"Ah, she finds it too dull there; she goes visiting. Madame la Duchesse de Berry will not stop at anything; she has the spirit of an Amazon. My father tells me that on the way from Paris to Cherbourg she went armed with pistols, and fired them off once, too, in the King's presence. His Majesty was much annoyed."
"It is her little son, is it not, who is the heir to the crown?" asked Horatia. "How old is he?"
"Henry V is this month ten years old," responded the Comte.
"Britwell-Prior in Oxfordshire belongs to the Welds of Lulworth," said the Rector musingly. "Oh, are you going, Tristram? Well, mind that you spare me M. de la Roche-Guyon to-morrow morning. I will be ... let me see—yes, I will be at the cross-roads at half-past ten, if he will join me there, and we will go to the White Horse, if Robin, who is really getting very fat, will carry me up the hill. And when shall I see you again?"
"At the Squire's on Saturday, I expect," said Tristram, adding that he hoped himself to get up a little dinner-party next week, if he could persuade M. de la Roche-Guyon to stay. He was beginning to take his leave when Horatia interrupted him.
"Before you go, Tristram, I want to show you this book which I picked up in Oxford before I went away. Excuse me, M. le Comte."
It is to be presumed that M. le Comte excused her, no other course being open to him, but he bent interested eyes upon her as she and Tristram stooped over the book together, eyes which had already opened wider than their wont when he first heard the mutual use of the Christian name.
"Pardon," he observed in a low voice to the Rector, "but Mademoiselle your daughter and Mr. Hungerford are par—relations, I should say?"
"A sort of cousins," replied Mr. Grenville. "Moreover Tristram Hungerford is almost a son to me—an old pupil whom I have known since he was a child." And wishing further to disarm possible foreign criticism, he added, "Our English girls have much more liberty than yours in France, you know."