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My conjecture had been correct; the strangers had slipped in before us, and they now stood by the vault of the Rochesters, their backs toward us, viewing through the rails the old time-stained marble tomb, where a kneeling angel guarded the remains of Damer de Rochester, slain at Marston Moor in the time of the civil wars, and of Elizabeth his wife. Our place was taken at the communion-rails.
The curious may read at the French Record Office many of these letters written in a bold, flowing hand by de Cossé in the hey-day of his love. The paper is time-stained, the ink is faded; but each sentence still palpitates with the passion that inspired it a century and a quarter ago. And with this great love came new honours for de Cossé.
At present we behold a reeking rotting mass of black thatch in a cheerless swamp; but, as the year wears on, those time-stained walls, though still both damp and mouldy, will be luxuriantly overspread with creeping plants honeysuckle, woodbine, jessamine, and the everblowing monthly rose.
And now, when the silver hairs were beginning to make their appearance among the ruddy gold, she would each Christmas take out from its hiding-place in the old-fashioned, brass-bound writing-desk the time-stained envelope, and compare the old-world design within with the modern and more florid cards, and in her heart of hearts she found more beauty in the simple wreath of holly with the couple of robins perched above and the bunch of mistletoe hanging below than in its more ornate followers of the present time.
On either side of him, there shot up against the dark sky, tall, gaunt, straggling houses, with time-stained fronts, and windows that seemed to have shared the lot of eyes in mortals, and to have grown dim and sunken with age.
"'Twasn't more'n a week till 'Lizabeth was down with slow fever nervous collapse, old Dr. Pendleton called it. We took turns nursin' her, and one day she looked up in my face and says, 'Jane, I know now what the mercy of the Lord is." Here Aunt Jane paused, and began to cut three-cornered pieces out of a time-stained square of flowered chintz. The quilt was to be of the wild-goose pattern.
He led me back into the banqueting-hall, his bedroom candle in his hand, and he held it up against the time-stained portrait on the wall. "Do you see anything there?" I looked at the broad plumed hat, the curling love-locks, the white lace collar, and the straight, severe face which was framed between them.
How had this time-stained epistle found its way into the pages, and how had the more modern missive be had fully expected to find there found its way out of it? Suddenly an idea occurred to him which, though sufficiently far-fetched, seemed as if it might by chance explain the mystery. Long and long ago a son of the house of Gold had married a daughter of the house of Fuller.
So saying, he drew a chair to the table, and, having found a few sheets of time-stained note paper, together with a penny bottle of ink, and an old crippled pen, he sat down to his unwelcome task. The undertaking proved even more troublesome than he had thought it would be.
Many and many a time during Lucy's after-life did the words of that sermon come back to her mind, associated with her father's earnest, solemn tones, with the peaceful beauty of that summer Sabbath evening with the old church, its high seats and pulpit and time-stained walls, and the old familiar faces whom all her life she had been wont to see, Sunday after Sunday, in the same familiar seats.
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