the past.  Perhaps he had thought it over, and seen that the deferred escape, the request for the pearls, the tryst at the palace, and detention from the king’s chamber, made an uglier case against Eustacie than he could endure to own even to himself.  If his heart trusted, his mind could not argue out her defence, and his tongue would not serve him for discussion with his grandfather, the only person who could act for him.  Perhaps the stunned condition of his mind made the suspense just within the bounds of endurance, while trust in his wife’s innocence rendered his inability to come to her aid well-nigh intolerable; and doubt of her seemed both profanity and misery unspeakable.  He could do nothing.  He had shot his only shaft by sending Landry Osbert, and had found that to endeavour to induce his grandfather to use further measures was worse than useless, and was treated as mere infatuation.  He knew that all he had to do was to endeavour for what patience he could win from Cecily’s sweet influence and guidance, and to wait till either certainty should come—­that dreadful, miserable certainty that all looked for, and his very helplessness might be bringing about—­or till he should regain strength to be again effective.

And miserably slow work was this recovery.  No one had surgical skill to deal with so severe a wound as that which Narcisse had inflicted; and the daily pain and inconvenience it caused led to innumerable drawbacks that often—­even after he had come as far as the garden—­brought him back to his bed in a dark room, to blood-letting, and to speechlessness.  No one knew much of his mind—­ Cecily perhaps the most; and next to her, Philip—­who, from the time he had been admitted to his step-brother’s presence, had been most assiduous in tending him—­seemed to understand his least sign, and to lay aside all his boisterous roughness in his eager desire to do him service.  The lads had loved each other from the moment they had met as children, but never so apparently as now, when all the rude horse-play of healthy youths was over—­and one was dependent, the other considerate.  And if Berenger had made on one else believe in Eustacie, he had taught Philip to view her as the ‘Queen’s men’ viewed Mary of Scotland.  Philip had told Lucy the rough but wholesome truth, that ’Mother talks mere folly.  Eustacie is no more to be spoken of with you than a pheasant with old brown Partlet; and Berry waits but to be well to bring her off from all her foes.  And I’ll go with him.’

It was on Philip’s arm that Berenger first crept round the bowling-green, and with Philip at his rein that he first endured to ride along the avenue on Lord Walwyn’s smooth-paced palfrey; and it was Philip who interrupted Lucy’s household cares by rushing in and shouting, ’Sister, here!  I have wiled him to ride over the down, and he is sitting under the walnut-tree quite spent, and the three little wenches are standing in a row, weeping like so many little mermaids.  Come, I say!’