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§ 2

She need never have been afraid of their not feeling at home. They were soon as much at their ease as at Leasan Parsonage, with their horses in the stables and their gallants in the drawing-room. Louise was glad for Charles's sake, for he took pleasure in the young life with its noisy intrigues and careless adventures. Besides, she sometimes found entertainment as a spectator. Her nieces' suitors both amused and amazed her. She liked young men, and of late years necessarily few had come her way. Charles had not many friends, for the neighbouring Squirearchy was gross and ignorant in comparison with the post-exile Alards. As for their French neighbours, till her nieces came to the house she had met them but little.

When Louise Alard, as a bride of sixteen, had first come to the district, she had been surprised to find so much of France in it. Her windows looked out across the valley to the homestead of La Petite Douce, and in places with more English-sounding names were the descendants of Poiles, Mouats and Espinettes that had crossed the Channel some eighty years ago. There were fewer of them than there used to be, said Charles, for the signing of the Edict of Nantes had ended the exile of several families, to the relief of the weavers, woolcarders, cloth-workers and iron-smelters of south-east Sussex, who had seen their livelihood being sneaked from them by better tradesmen. Many, however, were too long established to return—like the Douces, their French roots were torn up and they had married into the country of their adoption. They stayed and prospered, marking the district with their type, and even with their language, which gave some quaint corruptions to the local speech and some strange music to the local place-names.