“Shall we ride down to The Lilies? I should like Angélique to see me. She would be so pleased,” said Franceline, appealing to Sir Simon.
“You think she would? Silly old woman! very likely; but I want to have a talk with your father, so Clide must go and take care of you.” And the baronet slipped off his horse, which Mr. de Winton, with exemplary docility, at once mounted. The two young people set off at a canter, Franceline turning round to kiss her hand to her father, as they plunged into the trees and were lost to sight.
It would be useless to attempt to describe the effect of the apparition on Angélique: how she threw up her hands, and then flattened them between her knees, calling all the saints in Paradise to witness if any one had ever seen the like; and how nothing would satisfy her but that they should gallop up and down the field in front for her edification; and the astonishment of a flock of sheep which the performance sent scampering and bleating in wild dismay backwards and forwards along with them; and how, when Franceline’s hair came undone in the galloping, and fell in a golden shower down her back, the old woman declared it was the very image of S. Michael on horseback, whom she had seen trampling down the dragon in an Assyrian church. When it was all over, and Franceline had gone upstairs to change her dress, Clide tied the horses to a tree, and completed his conquest of the old lady by asking her to show him that wonderful casket he had heard so much about. She produced it from its hiding-place in M. de la Bourbonais’ room, and, reverently unwrapping it, proceeded to tell the story of how the papers had been rescued, and how they had been burned, watching her listener’s face with keen eyes all the while, to see if any shadow of scepticism was to be detected in it; but Clide was all attention and faith. “There are people who think it clever to laugh at the family for believing in such a story,” she observed; “but, as I say, when a thing has come down from father to son for nigh four thousand years, it’s hard not to believe in it; and to my mind it’s easier to believe it than to think anybody could have had the wit to invent it.” And Clide having agreed that no mere human imagination could ever indeed have reached so lofty a flight, Angélique called his attention to the ornamentation of the casket. “Monsieur can see how unlike anything in our times it is,” pointing to the antediluvian vipers crawling and writhing in the rusty iron; “and all that is typical—the snakes and the birds and the crooked signs—everything is typical, as Monsieur le Comte will tell you.”
“And what is it supposed to typify?” asked Clide, anxious to seem interested.
“Ah! I know nothing about that, monsieur!” replied Angélique with a shrug; and lest other questions of an equally indiscreet and unreasonable nature should follow, she covered up the casket and carried it off.
TO BE CONTINUED.
“CHIEFLY AMONG WOMEN.”
BY AN AMERICAN WOMAN.