many insults and private encounters. The younger branch, or Black
Ribaumonts, had received a grant from Louis XI. of the lands of
Nid-de-Merle, belonging to an unfortunate Angevin noble, who had
fallen under the royal displeasure, and they had enjoyed court
favour up to the present generation, when Henri II., either from
opposition to his father, instinct for honesty, or both, had become
a warm friend to the gay and brilliant young Baron de Ribaumont,
head of the white or elder branch of the family.

The family contention seemed likely to wear out of its own accord,
for the Count de Ribaumont was an elderly and childless man, and
his brother, the Chevalier de Ribaumont, was, according to the
usual lot of French juniors, a bachelor, so that it was expected
that the whole inheritance would centre upon the elder family.
However, to the general surprise, the Chevalier late in life
married, and became the father of a son and daughter; but soon
after calculations were still more thrown out by the birth of a
little daughter in the old age of the Count.

Almost from the hour in which her sex was announced, the King had
promised the Baron de Ribaumont that she should be the wife of his
young son, and that all the possessions of the house should be
settled upon the little couple, engaging to provide for the
Chevalier's disappointed heir in some commandery of a religious
order of knighthood.

The Baron's wife was English. He had, when on a visit to his
English kindred, entirely turned the head of the lovely Annora
Walwyn, and finding that her father, one of the gravest of Tudor
statesmen, would not hear of her breaking her engagement to the