Simon Dale by Antonio Hope

I have written the foregoing for my children's sake that they may know that once their father played some part in great affairs, and, rubbing shoulder to shoulder with folk of high degree, bore himself (as I venture to hope) without disgrace, and even with that credit which a ready brain and hand bring to their possessor. Here, then, I might well come to an end, and deny myself the pleasure of a last few words indited for my own comfort and to please a greedy recollection. The children, if they read, will laugh. Have you not seen the mirthful wonder that spreads on a girl's face when she comes by chance on some relic of her father's wooing, a faded wreath that he has given her mother, or a nosegay tied with a ribbon and a poem attached thereto? She will look in her father's face, and thence to where her mother sits at her needle-work, just where she has sat at her needle-work these twenty years, with her old kind smile and comfortable eyes. The girl loves her, loves her well, but -- how came father to write those words? For mother, though the dearest creature in the world, is not slim, nor dazzling, nor a Queen, nor is she Venus herself, decked in colours of the rainbow, nor a Goddess come from heaven to men, nor the desire of all the world, nor aught else that father calls her in the poem. Indeed, what father wrote is something akin to what the Squire slipped into her own hand last night; but it is a strange strain in which to write to mother, the dearest creature in the world, but no, not Venus in her glory nor the Queen of the Nymphs. But though the maiden laughs, her father is not ashamed. He still sees her to whom he wrote, and when she smiles across the room at him, and smiles again to see her daughter's wonder, all the years fade from the picture's face, and the vision stands as once it was, though my young mistress' merry eyes have not the power to see it. Let her laugh. God forbid that I should grudge it her! Soon enough shall she sit sewing and another laugh.

Carford was gone, well-nigh healed of his wound, healed also of his love, I trust, at least headed off from it. M. de Fontelles was gone also, on that quest of his which made my Lord Rochester so merry; indeed I fear that in this case the scoffer had the best of it, for he whom I have called M. de Perrencourt was certainly served again by his indignant subject, and that most brilliantly. Well, had I been a Frenchman, I could have forgiven King Louis much; and I suppose that, although an Englishman, I do not hate him greatly, since his ring is often on my wife's finger and I see it there without pain.