“I love the young man, and he would be to me as a son,” he said; “the comrade and support of my old age. I am poor, as the world goes now; have but just enough to live modestly in this retreat, where life costs but little. He is rich, and can give you a handsome seat near your sister’s mansion; and a house in London if you desire one; less splendid, doubtless, than Fareham’s palace on the Thames, but more befitting the habits and manners of an English gentleman’s wife. He can give you hounds and hawks, your riding-horses, and your coach-and-six. What more, in God’s name, can any reasonable woman desire?” “Only one thing, sir. To live my own life in peace, as my conscience and my reason bid me. I cannot love Denzil Warner, though of late I have grown to like and respect him as a friend and most intelligent companion. Your persistence is fast changing friendship into dislike; and the very name of the man would speedily become hateful to me.” “Oh, I have done!” retorted Sir John. “I am no tyrant. You must take your own way, mistress. I can but lament that Providence gave me only two daughters, and one of them an arrant fool.” He left her in a huff, and had it not been for an astonishing event, which convulsed town and country, and suspended private interests and private quarrels in the excitement of public affairs, she would have heard much more of his discontent. The Dutch ships were at Chatham. English men-of-war were blazing at the very mouth of the Thames, and there was panic lest the triumphant foe should sail their fire-ships up the river to London, besiege the Tower, relight the fire whose ashes were scarce grown cold, pillage, slaughter, destroy—as Tilly had destroyed the wretched Provinces in the religious war. Here, in this sheltered haven, amidst green fields, under the lee of the Brill, the panic and consternation were as intense as if the village of St. Nicholas were the one spot the Dutch would make for after landing; and, indeed, there were rustics who went to the placid scene where the infant Thame rises in its cradle of reed and lily, half expectant of seeing Netherlandish vessels stranded among the rushes. The Dutch fleet was at Chatham. Ships were being sunk across the Medway, to stop the invader. Sheerness was to be fortified. London was in arms; and Brill remembered its repulse of Hampden’s regiment with a proud consciousness of being invincible. The Dutch fleet saved Angela many a paternal lecture; for Sir John rode post-haste towards London, and did not return until the end of the month. In London he found Hyacinth, much disturbed about her husband, who had gone as volunteer with General Middleton, and was in command of a cavalry regiment at Chatham. “I never saw him in such spirits as when he left me,” Lady Fareham told her father. “I believe he is ever happiest when he breathes gunpowder.”