“It is a bad case, I grant; but I can stir no finger where that man is concerned. I can hold no communication with that scoundrel.”
“But your lawyer could claim custody of the children for you, perhaps.”
“I think not, Angela, unless there was a criminal neglect of their bodies. The law takes no account of souls.”
Angela’s greatest anxiety—now that Denzil’s recovery was assured—was for the welfare of these children whom she fondly loved, and for whom she would have gladly played a mother’s part. She wrote in secret to her sister, entreating her to return to England for her children’s sake, and to devote herself to them in retirement at Chilton, leaving the scandal of her elopement to be forgotten in the course of blameless years; so that by the time Henriette was old enough to enter the world her mother would have recovered the esteem of worthy people, as well as the respect of the mob.
Lady Fareham’s tardy answer was not encouraging. She had no design of returning to a house in which she had never been properly valued, and she admired that her sister should talk of scandal, considering that the scandal of her own intrigue with her brother-in-law had set all England talking, and had been openly mentioned in the London and Oxford Gazettes. Silence about other people’s affairs would best become a young miss who had made herself so notorious.
As for the children, Lady Fareham had no doubt that their father, who had ever lavished more affection upon them than he bestowed upon his wife, might be trusted with the care of them, however abominable his conduct might be in other matters. But in any case her ladyship would not exchange Paris for London, where she had been slighted and neglected at Court as well as at home.
The letter was a tissue of injustice and egotism; and Angela gave up all hope of influencing her sister for good; but not the hope of being useful to her sister’s children.
Now, as the short winter days went by, and the preparations for departure were making, she grew more and more urgent with her father to obtain the custody of his grandchildren, and carry them to France with him, where they might be reared and educated under his own eye. Montpelier was the place of exile he had chosen, a place renowned alike for its admirable climate and educational establishments; and where Sir John had spent the previous winter, and had made friends.
It was to Montpelier the great Chancellor had retired from the splendours of a princely mansion but just completed—far exceeding his own original intentions in splendour, as the palaces of new-made men are apt to do—and from a power and authority second only to that of kings. There the grandfather of future queens was now residing in modest state, devoting the evening of his life to the composition of an authentic record of the late rebellion, and of those few years during which he had been at the head of affairs in England. Sir John Kirkland, who had never forgotten his own disappointments in the beginning of his master’s restored fortunes, had a fellow-feeling for “Ned Hyde” in his fall.
“As a statesman he was next in capacity to Wentworth,” said Sir John, “and yet a painted favourite and a rabble of shallow wits were strong enough to undermine him.”