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Lady Kirkland, the only daughter of the Marquise de Montrond, one of Queen Henrietta Maria's ladies-in-waiting, had been a papist, and, although Sir John had adhered steadfastly to the principles of the Reformed Church, he had promised his bride, and the Marquise, her mother, that if their nuptials were blessed with offspring, their children should be educated in the Roman faith a promise difficult of performance in a land where a stormy tide ran high against Rome, and where Popery was a scarlet spectre that alarmed the ignorant and maddened the bigoted.
She had been placed in the charge of her maternal grandmother, the Marquise de Montrond, who had taken ship for Calais when the Court left London, leaving her royal mistress to weather the storm.
Failing to carry the place with the first, the Cardinal began to negotiate a treaty of peace, the principal item of which was full pardon to the citizens, and by others an agreement that the Princess and her son should retire to Montrond: on these terms the city yielded to its sovereign.
With Madame de Montrond, Hyacinth had been reared, partly in a mediaeval mansion, with a portcullis and four squat towers, near the Chateau d'Arques, and partly in Paris, where the lady had a fine house in the Marais. The sisters had never looked upon each other's faces, Angela having entered upon the troubled scene after Hyacinth had been carried across the Channel to her grandmother.
Then came M. de Montrond, and he again was premier gentilhomme de France while he lived and le dernier des gentilhommes Français when he died. M. de Montrond belonged to two generations, two strongly-contrasted epochs. At his first ball at court he wore a powdered cadogan and danced in talons rouges: at his last he lolled with bald head against a doorway, in varnished boots and starched cravat.
On learning that Palluan was advancing on that fortress, Conti and Nemours not wishing that the precious pledges confided to their charge should incur any risk, left the Marquis de Persan in Montrond, and with what remained to them of their faithful troops escorted the Princess, her son, and Madame de Longueville as far as Guienne, which they reached by the end of the month of October.
He sent his servant to the stable where four-and-twenty goodly steeds belonging to the Count de Champagne were champing their oats in all security, with orders to carry them off and leave in lieu of the magnificent animals a message to the effect that M. de Montrond would sell the stud to pay himself, and hand over the balance to the Count de Champagne.
It is hard for father and children to be scattered, as we are scattered; thy sister Hyacinth in Paris, and thou in Flanders, and I in England. Yet it must needs be so for a while!" "Why should not Hyacinth come to us and be reared with Angela?" asked the reverend mother. "Nay, madam, Hyacinth is well cared for with your sister, Madame de Montrond.
Nemours alone knew what had taken place during that journey from Montrond to Bordeaux, and the man who is base enough to constitute himself the denouncer of a woman to whom he has paid the warmest homage, is not very worthy of being believed on his word.
All she knew of the world outside those walls was from hearsay. A rare visit from her lovely half-sister, the Marquise de Montrond, had astonished her with the sight of a distinguished Parisienne, and left her wondering. She had never read a secular book.
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