In the
mean time, Lady Fareham had a liberal income allowed her by the Marquise,
her grandmother, and she and her husband had been among the most splendid
foreigners at the French Court, where the lady's beauty and wit had placed
her conspicuously in that galaxy of brilliant women who shone and sparkled
about the sun of the European firmament--Le roi soleil, or "the King," par
excellence, who took the blazing sun for his crest. The Fronde had been a
time of pleasurable excitement to the high-spirited girl, whose mixed
blood ran like quicksilver, and who delighted in danger and party strife,
stratagem and intrigue. The story of her courage and gaiety of heart in the
siege of Paris, she being then little more than a child, had reached the
Flemish convent long after the acts recorded had been forgotten at Paris
and St. Germain.
Angela's heart beat fast at the thought of being restored to these dear
ones, were it only for a short span. They were not going to carry her away
from the convent; and, indeed, seeing that she so loved her aunt, the good
reverend mother, and that her heart cleaved to those walls and to the holy
exercises which filled so great a part of her life, her father, in replying
to a letter in which she had besought him to release her from her promise
and allow her to dedicate herself to God, had told her that, although he
could not surrender his daughter, to whom he looked for the comfort of his
closing years, he would not urge her to leave the Ursulines until he should
feel himself old and feeble, and in need of her tender care.
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