of fortune and abode, and that they were still in hopes of seeing their English home again. "But," quietly remarked his Grace, "the locks have been altered since those keys were in use"--a reply which, whether intended or not, had much significance in it. There are many good people in the world who cling tenaciously to the keys which were fabricated by the worthies of olden time, forgetful that the locks have been altered, so that their binding and loosing power is gone. Doubtless the nuns made their own comments when in later years a gruesome story came from England to them in their new home across the sea. The coffin of Henry VIII., on its journey towards Windsor, was laid for a night within the convent walls; there the bloated corpse within burst, and the blood dropped on the pavement, so that it was licked up by the dogs, as that of the King of Israel in the streets of Samaria. A few months later the convent was granted to the Lord Protector Somerset, who began the building of the present mansion, and when he fell on the scaffold, it was given to Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. There was a curse upon it. Lord Guildford Dudley had it for his home, and from its door he led the Lady Jane, his wife, to the Tower, to claim the throne of England, and receive at last the stroke of the headsman's axe. Elizabeth granted it to Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, but he was no exception to the ill-luck of his house, for he was afterwards convicted of being an accomplice in the Gunpowder Plot, disgraced, heavily fined, and imprisoned in the Tower. His son, the tenth earl, repaired the house, and from beneath its roof the children of the ill-fated King Charles were conducted to St. James's Palace to bid their father a last farewell. One of them--Charles II.--held his court here during the Great Plague, and royalty has more than once in later times been a guest within the walls of Sion House. The mansion retains the general outline of the Lord Protector's building, though it has been modernised, and probably made uglier. It is a bleak-looking structure, faced with grey stone, quadrangular in plan, as we note in passing, with embattled square towers at the corner. The principal façade is relieved by an arched terrace, and over the central bay now stands the lion with outstretched tail, once so conspicuous on Northumberland House in the Strand. The gardens and grounds, laid out in the style of the last century, are fine, the plant-houses being especially noted--in fact, they "may be said to be no mean rivals to Kew."