Of the court I saw nothing. My aunt had hoped, I believe, to procure some place for herself, but in that she did not succeed. Still she was often at the court, and was liked by the king for her wit and sprightliness. When she was away, my only society was my maid Zelie, whom I had never liked, and now thoroughly distrusted, believing her to be a spy upon me, my aunt's lapdog and her parrot. My only recreation was in reading the very few books which were thought proper for a young lady, my music, and my embroidery, and I only went out to go to church, whither I was attended by Zelie or an older woman who had been my aunt's nurse, and who, having been a Huguenot in her youth and then converted, was of course doubly zealous and devoted. Oh, to what a slavery had I brought myself! With what impassioned longing I looked back to the days when I used to climb the hill at Tre Madoc to attend to my little school or run down to the beach to watch the pilchard-fishing, and of those earlier times in Normandy when I played with Lucille and David in the orchards, or helped to pile up the golden and rosy apples for the eider-mill! I would gladly have changed places with the poorest old woman in Cornwall for the privilege of walking abroad unfettered, and weeping my fill unwatched. I would have given all the costly furniture of our hotel, had it been mine, for half a dozen loose leaves of my mother's old prayer-book, for it was one of my great troubles that I could not remember the words of Scripture. I suppose it might have been some odd effect of my illness, but while my memory had become clear as to other things, it was in that respect almost a blank. In the state of mind I then was, I regarded this forgetfulness as a direct judgment from Heaven, and an express proof and mark of my reprobation. I thirsted for the water of life. I read again and again the few psalms and meagre bits of scripture contained in my books of devotion. That fountain was to be once more unsealed for me, but not till I had drank my fill of the bitter waters and broken cisterns for which I had forsaken it. Meantime affairs were not going well with my uncle. I was told nothing, but I gathered from things that I overheard and from hints dropped in my presence that he had lost the favor of his royal master in the first place by outstaying his leave in England, and though he had hoped to make his peace by the presentation of a new convert to the Catholic faith, the offering had not been altogether sufficient. Court favor is of all earthly things one of the most uncertain.