"
"A happy grandmother," said the maiden, "who had the luck to find the
stray page just when his mistress had slipped his leash, and a most
lucky page that has jumped at once from a page to an old lady's
gentleman-usher!"
"All this is nothing of your history," answered Roland Graeme, began to
be much interested in the congenial vivacity of this facetious young
gentlewoman,--" tale for tale is fellow-traveller's justice."
"Wait till we are fellow-travellers, then," replied Catherine.
"Nay, you escape me not so," said the page; "if you deal not justly by
me, I will call out to Dame Bridget, or whatever your dame be called,
and proclaim you for a cheat."
"You shall not need," answered the maiden--"my history is the
counterpart of your own; the same words might almost serve, change but
dress and name. I am called Catherine Seyton, and I also am an
orphan."
"Have your parents been long dead?"
"This is the only question," said she, throwing down her fine eyes
with a sudden expression of sorrow, "that is the only question I
cannot laugh at."
"And Dame Bridget is your grandmother?"
The sudden cloud passed away like that which crosses for an instant
the summer sun, and she answered with her usual lively expression,
"Worse by twenty degrees--Dame Bridget is my maiden aunt."
"Over gods forbode!" said Roland--"Alas! that you have such a tale to
tell! and what horror comes next?"
"Your own history, exactly. I was taken upon trial for service--"
"And turned off for pinching the duenna, or affronting my lady's
waiting-woman?"
"Nay, our history varies there," said the damsel--"Our mistress broke
up house, or had her house broke up, which is the same thing, and I am
a free woman of the forest.
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