“Ay, if that were possible. Alas! there’s none very pleasant now—every day new anxieties, new fears. I wish this horrid war were at an end, one way or the other, so that we might get back to dear old Hollymead.”
“Don’t say one way or the other, Vag. If it should end in the King being conqueror, Hollymead will be no more a home for us. It would even cease to belong to us.”
“I almost wish it never had.”
“Why that?”
“You should know, Sab. But for my father sending him there after those worthless things, he would not now be—”
“Dear Vaga!” interrupted the elder sister entreatingly. “For your life do not let father hear you speak in that strain. ’Twould vex him very much, and, as you yourself know, he has grieved over it already.”
“Ah, true. I won’t say a word about it again, in his hearing, anyhow—you may trust me. But it’s hard to think of my dear Eustace being in a prison—shut up in a dark dungeon, perhaps hungering, thirsting, and, worse than all, suffering ill-treatment at the hands of some cruel jailer.”
She was justified in calling him her “dear Eustace” now, and giving him all her sympathies. Since that night of perverse misconceptions at Montserrat House there had been many an interview between them; the thread of their interrupted dialogue by Ruardean Hill had been taken up again, and spun into a cord which now bound them together by vows of betrothal.
Of their engagement Sabrina was aware, and under the like herself, she could well comprehend her sister’s feelings. True, her betrothed was not in a prison, but she knew not how soon he might be—or worse, dead on the battlefield. Invincible as she believed him, war had its adverse fates, was full of perils, every day, as the other had said, fraught with new anxieties and fears. Concealing her own, she essayed to dispel those of her sister, rejoining,—
“Nonsense, Vag. Nothing so bad. Why should they treat him with cruelty?”