Lady Kirkland, the only daughter of the Marquise de Montrond, one of Queen
Henrietta Maria's ladies-in-waiting, had been a papist, and, although Sir
John had adhered steadfastly to the principles of the Reformed Church,
he had promised his bride, and the Marquise, her mother, that if their
nuptials were blessed with offspring, their children should be educated
in the Roman faith--a promise difficult of performance in a land where a
stormy tide ran high against Rome, and where Popery was a scarlet spectre
that alarmed the ignorant and maddened the bigoted. And now, duly provided
with a safe conduct from the regicide, Bradshaw, he was journeying to the
city where he was to part with his daughter for an indefinite period. He
had seen but little of her, and yet it seemed as hard to part thus as if
she had prattled at his knees and nestled in his arms every day of her
young life.

At last across the distance, against the wind-driven clouds of that stormy
winter sky, John Kirkland saw the lights of the city--not many lights or
brilliant of their kind, but a glimmer here and there--and behind the
glimmer the dark bulk of masonry, roofs, steeples, watch-towers, bridges.

The carriage stopped at one of the gates of the city, and there were
questions asked and answered, and papers shown, but there was no obstacle
to the entrance of the travellers. The name of the Ursuline Convent acted
like a charm, for Louvain was papist to the core in these days of Spanish
dominion. It had been a city of refuge nearly a hundred years ago for all
that was truest and bravest and noblest among English Roman Catholics, in
the cruel days of Queen Elizabeth, and Englishmen had become the leading
spirits of the University there, and had attracted the youth of Romanist
England to the sober old Flemish town, before the establishment of Dr.
Allan's rival seminary at Douai, Sir John could have found no safer haven
for his little ewe lamb.