The Midnight Queen [124]
ago, slaves wore rings as the sign of their bondage - is it for
the same reason married women wear them now? While she yet
looked half-doubtfully at it, she was surrounded, congratulated,
and stunned with a sadden clamor of voices; and then, through it
all, she heard the well-remembered voice of Count L'Estrange,
saying:
"My lords and ladies, time is on the wing, and the sun is already
half an hour high! Off with you all to the courtyard, and mount,
while Lady Kingsley changes her wedding-gear for robes more
befitting travel, and joins us there."
With a low obeisance to the king, the lovely bride hastened away
after one of the favorite's attendants, to do as he directed, and
don a riding-suit. In ten minutes after, when the royal
cavalcade started, she turned from the pest-stricken city, too
and fairest, where all was fair, by Sir Norman's side rode
Leoline.
________________
Sitting one winter night by a glorious winter fire, while the
snow and hail lashed the windows, and the wind without roared
like Bottom, the weaver, a pleasant voice whispered the foregoing
tale. Here, as it paused abruptly, and seemed to have done with
the whole thing, I naturally began to ask questions. What
happened the dwarf and his companions? What became of Hubert?
Did Sir Norman and Lady Kingsley go to Devonshire, and did either
of them die of the plague? I felt, myself, when I said it, that
the last suggestion was beneath contempt, and so a withering look
from the face opposite proved; but the voice was obliging enough
to answer the rest of my queries. The dwarf and his cronies
being put into his majesty's jail of Newgate, where the plague
was raging fearfully, they all died in a week, and so managed to
cheat the executioner. Hubert went to France, and laid his
claims before the royal Louis, who, not being able to do
otherwise, was graciously pleased to acknowledge them; and Hubert
became the Marquis de Montmorenci, and in the fullness of time
took unto himself a wife, even of the daughters of the land, and
lived happy for ever after.
And Sir Norman and Lady Kingsley did go to the old manor in
Devonshire, where - with tradition and my informant - there is to
be seen to this day, an old family-picture, painted some twelve
years after, representing the knight and his lady sitting
serenely in their "ain ingle nook" with their family around them.
Sir Norman,- a little portlier, a little graver, in the serious
dignity of pater familias; and Leoline, with the dark, beautiful
eyes, the falling, shining hair, the sweet smiling lips, and
lovely, placid face of old. Between them, on three hassocks, sit
three little boys; while the fourth, and youngest, a miniature
little Sir Norman, leans against his mother's shoulder, and looks
thoughtfully in her sweet, calm face. Of the fate of those four,
the same ancient lore affirms: "That the eldest afterward bore
the title of Earl of Kingsley; that the second became a lord high
admiral, or chancellor, or something equally highfalutin; and
that the third became an archbishop. But the highest honor of
all was reserved for the fourth, and youngest," continued the
narrating voice, "who, after many days, sailed for America, and,
in the course of time, became President of the United States ."
Determined to be fully satisfied on this point, at least, the
author invested all her spare change in a catalogue of all the
said Presidents, from George Washington to Chester A. Arthur,
and, after a diligent and absorbing perusal of that piece of
literature, could find no such name as Kingsley whatever; and has
been forced to come to the conclusion that he most have applied
to Congress to change his name on arriving in the New World, or
else that her informant was laboring reader a falsehood when she
told her so. As for the rest,
"I know not how the truth may be;