After many meaningless exclamations and wide questions by Mrs. Grace, and a few replies from Hanbury, the latter said, "I think the best thing I can do is to tell you all I know, as briefly as possible."
"That will be the best," said Mrs. Grace. "But if the man who married Kate Grace was a Pole, how did they come to call him a Frenchman?"
"No doubt he used French here in England, as being the most convenient language for one who did not know English. Remember, he was a private gentleman then."
"I thought you said he was a count?"
"Well, yes, of course he was a count; but I meant, he had no public position such as he afterwards held, nor had he any hopes of being more than plain Count Poniatowski."
"Oh, I see. Then may we hear the story?" She settled herself back in her chair, taking the hand of her grand-daughter into the safe keeping and affectionate clasp of both her hands.
"Towards the end of the first half of the eighteenth century, Count Poniatowski, son of a Lituanian nobleman, came to England. He was a man of great personal beauty and accomplishments. While he was in this country he made the acquaintance of Sir Hanbury Williams, and became a favourite with that poet and diplomatist. When Sir Hanbury went as Ambassador to St. Petersburg, he took the young nobleman with him. In the Russian capital, he attracted the attention of the Grand Duchess Catherine. When she came to the Russian throne--when King Augustus III. of Poland died, in 1764--Catherine, now Empress--used her influence to such effect, that Stanislaus was elected King of Poland. He was then thirty-two years of age. It was under this unfortunate king that the infamous partition of Poland took place, and the kingdom was abolished. Russia, Austria and Germany now own the country over which Stanislaus once reigned."
"And how about Kate Grace?" asked the widow in a low voice.
"I am coming to that, as you may imagine, but I wanted first to tell you who this man was. Well, Stanislaus spent a good while in England, and among other places that he went to was Derbyshire, and there, while staying in the neighbourhood with a gentleman, a friend of Sir Hanbury Williams, he saw and fell in love with Kate Grace, the beauty of the place in those times. He made love to her, and she ran away with him, and was married to him in the name of Augustus Hanbury, in the town of Derby, as the parish Register, my father says, shows to this day. Subsequently she came to London and lived with him as his wife, but under the name of Hanbury. He sent a substantial sum of money to his father-in-law, and an assurance that Kate had been legally married, but that, for family reasons, he could not acknowledge his wife just then, but would later. Subsequently he went to Russia in the train of his friend, Sir Hanbury Williams, leaving behind him his wife and infant son comfortably provided for. He had not been long in St. Petersburg when his King, Augustus III of Poland, recalled him to that kingdom. Meanwhile, his wife, Kate Grace that had been, died; they said of a broken heart. Young Stanislaus Hanbury, the son of this marriage, was taken charge of by one of the Williams family, and when Stanislaus became King of Poland, he sent further moneys to the Graces, and to provide for his son, Stanislaus. But the Graces never knew exactly the man their daughter had married. They were quite sure she was legally married, and had no difficulty in taking the money Stanislaus sent them. They were under the impression their daughter had gone to France, that she died early, and that she left no child."
"It is a most wonderful and romantic history," said the old woman in a dazed way. The story had seemed to recede from her and hers, and to be no more to her than a record of things done in China a thousand years ago. The remote contact of her grand-daughter with the robes of a crowned King, had for the time numbed her faculties. It seemed as though the girl, upon the mere recital, must have suffered a change, and that it would be necessary to readjust the relations between them.