Mr. Denzil Holroyd's only surviving child, the lady who afterwards became my mother, had passed a jejune childhood in a house impoverished by her father's loyalty to the Stuart cause, and persecuted in the latter days, even to bitterness, for its stanch adherence to the faith of Rome. She had been the close and tender friend of the first Lady Drayton. Following hard upon the death of that lady came fresh ill-fortune upon the Holroyd family, of which the death of Denzil, its head, was a part; and Mistress Alicia Holroyd, left without a natural protector, and stripped by cruel laws and wicked informers of her last acres, flung herself late of a bitter winter's night against my father's door, begging shelter from the inclemency of Nature, and protection from the baseness of her Puritan cousin, who, not content with the filching her inheritance, would have added her person to his plunder as the price of food and lodging, hoping thus to make sure his title against future turns of fate. Silas Holroyd pursuing, found her clinging as some frightened child to my father. Silas soon returned the way he came, but after what words with my father was never known, since he dared tell no man what passed between them, and none dared question Sir Michael. Yet Alicia could not dwell in the house where now was no mistress, so out of this difficulty, as of so many another, my father must needs find a way; which indeed he did, as the words he used in telling me of the matter shall now inform any that has read so far in my narrative. "I told your good mother, little daughter Phil," he said, "that I had little power or credit in the land to help my friend. 'But,' said I, that bitter night that she came to me, 'if you will wed an old man and a broken, there is yet left in Drayton the strength to make some show of cover for the mistress of his board and the partner of his bed. 'T is a poor thing to offer, but it will serve to make a fool of that knave Silas, when he shall try, as well I know he will, to recover the custody of your person by a process of law, charging me with your abduction. I will cherish you well, if you will have me for husband.'" And if the poor lady let gratitude usurp the place of love who shall blame her, being in such straits? Not I, her most happy daughter. Were it but for the father she gave me, I will thank her next in order only to her God and mine till I die, and after, I do firmly trust.