And ere long we were all three quietly gathered around Lady Lucy's chair, Lettice on a cushion at her feet (where she best loved to be), I on the window-seat near, and Dr. Antony leaning on the back of her chair. She was discoursing to him in French, which she spoke with a marvellously natural accent, and which I had never heard him speak before. I know not why, it seemed as if the language threw a new vivacity and fire into his countenance, and I felt very ignorant, and humbled, not to be able to join. But this feeling did not last long, Lady Lucy had a way of divining what passed in the mind, and she called me near, and made me sit on a little chair beside her, and drew my hand into hers, and encouraged me to say such words as I knew, and praised my accent, and said it had just that pretty English lisp in it that some of the countrymen of poor Queen Henrietta Maria had thought charming. She made Dr. Antony tell us moving histories still in French of his ancestors, their daring deeds and hair-breadth 'scapes. So an hour passed, and we were all friends, bound together by the easy charm of her sweet gracious manner, and had forgotten the storm and everything else, till we were summoned to supper. "Ah, Monsieur!" said she, giving him her hand as she took leave of him, with a smile, "re-assure Mistress Dorothy as to my orthodoxy, and make her believe my sympathies are on the right side with the sufferers of St. Bartholomew's Day. And Olive, little champion," said she, drawing my forehead down to her for a kiss, and stroking my cheek, "never think it necessary again to interpose in a battle between your aunt and your Mother's friend. I honour her from my heart for her fidelity to conscience. And if she is more anxious than necessary about my faith--we should surely bear one another no grudge for that. I know it cost her more than it did me for her to exhort me as she did. And I am not sure," she added, smiling, "if after all she does not love me better than any of you." "Mistress Olive," said Dr. Antony, as we sat that evening in the dusk, by the window of my Father's room, while he wrote, "I would that Christian women understood the beautiful work they might do if they would take their true part as such." "What would that be?" I said, thinking, after the experience of to-day, it might probably be the part of the Mute.