‘Nay, nay, Eustace,’ I said; ‘the names of Walwyn and Ribaumont must not be lost.’
‘She may make Darpent deserve a fresh creation, then,’ he answered, smiling sadly. ‘It will be best to wait a little, as I have told her, to see how matters turn out at home.’
I asserted with all my heart, and told him what our brother Solivet had said.
‘Yes,’ he said; ‘Solivet and our mother will brook the matter much better if she is to live in England, the barbarous land that they can forget. And if I do not live, I will leave them each a letter that they cannot quite disregard.’
I said I was glad he had not consented to Annora’s notion of bringing Darpent to Holland, since Solivet might lie in wait for him, and besides, it would not be treating our mother rightly.
‘No,’ said Eustace; ‘if I am ever strong enough again I must return to Paris, and endeavour to overcome their opposition.’ And he spoke with a weary sigh, though I augured that he would soon improve under our care, and that of Tryphena, who had always been better for him than any doctor. Then I could not help reproaching him a little with having ventured himself in that terrible climate and hopeless cause.
‘As to the climate, that was not so much amiss,’ said Eustace. ‘Western Scotland is better and more wholesome than these Dutch marshes. The sea-gull fares better than the frog.’
‘But the cause,’ I said. ‘Why did you not wait to go with the King?’
‘There were reasons, Meg,’ he said. ‘The King was hounding—yes, hounding out the Marquis to lead the forlorn hope. Heaven forgive me for my disloyalty in thinking he wished to be quit of one so distasteful to the Covenanters who have invited him.’
And when I broke forth in indignation, Eustace lowered his voice, and said sadly that the King was changed in many points from the Prince of Wales, and that listening to policy was not good for him. Then I asked why, if the King hounded, as he called it, the Marquis, on this unhappy expedition, should Eustace have share in it?