'Contract of marriage on the part of Philippe Marie Francois de
Bellaise, Marquis de Nidermerle, and Eustace de Ribaumont, Baron
Walwyn of Walwyn, in Dorset, and Baron de Ribaumont in Picardy, on
behoof of Gaspard Henri Philippe, Viscount de Bellaise, nephew of the
Marquis de Nidemerle, and Margaret Henrietta Maria de Ribaumont,
daughter of the Baron de Ribaumont.'

Then I knew that I had been taken in by the Prince's wicked trick,
and that my husband was to be the young viscount, not the old uncle!
I do not think that this was much comfort to me at the moment, for,
all the same, I was going into a strange country, away from every one
I had ever known.

But I did take courage to look up under my eye-lashes at the form I
was to see with very different eyes. M. de Ballaise was only
nineteen, but although not so tall as my father or brother, he had
already that grand military bearing which is only acquired in the
French service, and no wonder, or he had been three years in the
Regiment de Conde, and had already seen two battles and three sieges
in Savoy, and now had only leave of absence for the winter before
rejoining his regiment in the Low Countries.

Yet he looked as bashful as a maiden. It was true that, as my father
said, his bashfulness was as great as an Englishman's. Indeed, he
had been bred up at his great uncle's chateau in Anjou, under a
strict abbe who had gone with him to the war, and from whom he was
only now to be set free upon his marriage. He had scarcely ever
spoken to any lady but his old aunt--his parents had long been dead--
and he had only two or three times seen his little sister through the
grating of her convent. So, as he afterwards confessed, nothing but