He went on to tell her that one of these exiles from their native land had been kindly received and nobly entertained by a family which had long been more or less connected with England and English people. He was of a daring and adventurous nature, and had sought his fortune, before he came to France, in still more distant countries; but there was something in his whole demeanour, in the high education which he displayed, in the noble feelings which often burst from him, even in the very faults and untamed wildness of a nature spoilt by indulgence, which confirmed his account of his own high rank, and the large possessions of his dead father in the island of his birth. That man, he said, was now the Earl of Danemore; and then, in the graces of youth, he found no great difficulty in winning the heart of Eugenie de Beaulieu, whose feelings in his favour were first excited by compassion, and ended in admiration and in love. They parted, but it was soon to meet again. Her brother had been forced to join the army then warring in the Low Countries. Her uncle had been sent to England on one of the brief embassies which from time to time marked the broken intercourse between the great usurper Cromwell and the legitimate monarch of France. The aunt of Eugenie de Beaulieu, having accompanied her husband, had sent over people in whom she could confide, to bring her niece, who had been left almost unprotected in France during her brother's absence, to the British capital; but the death of Cromwell, and the uncertain policy of his weak successor, had thrown the whole country into confusion ere she arrived. Eugenie was followed by her lover, and never reached the dwelling of her uncle in London. Ere she arrived at that city she had consented to become a wife; and her husband, having been discovered as an adherent of the house of Stuart, was soon after obliged to fly and leave her. What he meditated, what he purposed by such an act, his son now touched upon but slightly; but he was obliged to tell how, by threats as well as by entreaties, the Earl had forced her, who had been his bride but a few weeks, to give into his hands all the proofs of their private marriage, promising by everything he held sacred never to destroy them. The next part of the story was a painful one, and was also passed over lightly: how his mother returned to France, and did not find her husband where she expected to meet him; how she was forced to communicate her situation to her brother; how her brother doubted and feared, but at length believed her tale; how he cast all thoughts aside but that of doing justice to his sister; how he traced out her husband, and eagerly, perhaps fiercely, demanded that he should do her right. How, in short, two high tempers went on to words which could not be forgiven; how they fought, and how both had nearly died where they stood. So went the tale.