Then I saw it was too true, and cried out in despair to beg them to
let me stay at home, and not send me from them; but my mother bade me
not be a silly wench. I had always known that I was to be married in
France and the queen and my half-brother, M. de Solivet, had found an
excellent parti for me. I was not to embarrass matters by any folly,
but I must do her credit, and not make her regret that she had not
sent me to a convent to be educated.

Then I clung to my father. I could hold him tight in the dark, and
the flambeaux only cast in a fitful flickering light. 'Oh, sir,'
said I, 'you cannot wish to part with your little Meg!'

'You are your mother's child, Meg,' he said sadly. 'I gave you up to
her to dispose of at her will.'

'And you will thank me one of these days for your secure home,' said
my mother. 'If these rogues continue disaffected, who knows what
they may leave us in England!'

'At least we should be together,' I cried, and I remember how I
fondled my father's hand in the dark, and how he returned it. We
should never have thought of such a thing in the light; he would have
been ashamed to allow such an impertinence, and I to attempt it.

Perhaps it emboldened me to say timidly: 'If he were not so old---'

But my mother declared that she could not believe her ears that a
child of hers should venture on making such objections--so
unmaidenly, so undutiful to a parti selected by the queen and