“So you’ve done what you said you would?”
It was Reginald who spoke.
“Done what?”
“Turned traitor to your King. And to your father too?”
“But not to my conscience, nor my God. They are more to me than loyalty to any King, as you call it—even more than affection for my poor deluded father, however much I feel for him.”
“Feel for him, indeed! Ha, ha! But you can go on as you’ve begun. Your Cropheads have it all their own way here, and now; but the tide will turn sooner than you may think for. As for yourself, Eust, you may thank your stars you weren’t among the rabble that overpowered me at Highnam. I sent half-a-dozen to their long account, and like as not you’d have been one of them.”
The implied superiority, even without the cruelty, was an impertinence. But Eustace Trevor, instead of taking it in that sense, and making angry retort, treated it rather as a joke, with a light laugh rejoining—
“Possibly had I been there, Rej, you wouldn’t be here.”
At which he turned away, leaving his dark-browed cousin to count the change in satire that had been given him in full.