"'Tis confest; but for all that, I am here by his charity."
"Your aunt?"
"My aunt lives in the atmosphere of Sir Thomas' whims and wishes. What she will think, what she will do, depends upon what he thinks and what he does."
"'Tis commonly said that he is devoted to her."
"He loves her after the ordinary rate of husbands, I'll warrant." Then, speaking with her old peremptoriness, she said suddenly, "But for God's sake let me ask when you heard anything of Prince Rupert? Oh, Jane, I am sick with heart-hunger for some small intelligence of his doings or his whereabouts."
"He has filled the news-letters and papers lately."
"But I am not suffered to see them. 'Tis pretended they will make me ill; and Sir Thomas vowed when the doctor gave the order, that he was glad on it, and that he had long wanted an excuse to keep the pernicious sheets outside of his house. So, then, I hear nothing, and if I did hear, twenty to one I would be the better of it."
"I think you would, Matilda. What is harder to bear than trouble that is not sure? Still, to be the messenger of ill news is an ungrateful office."
"Any news will be grateful; be so much my friend, dear Jane, as to tell me all you have heard."
"You know that he was made Admiral of the Royalist Navy; but, indeed, he is said to be nothing else but a pirate, robbing all ships that he may support the Stuart family at The Hague. No sail could leave British waters without being attacked by him, until Blake drove him to the African coast and the West Indies."