’Certainly you take good care it should prove so, when you make marriages such as that of the d’Aubepines,’ said Nan.

Solivet shrugged his shoulders by way of answer, and warned my afterwards to take good care of our sister, or she would do something that would shock us all.  To which I answered that the family honour was safe in the hand of so high-minded a maiden as our Annora, and he replied: 

’Then there is, as I averred, no truth in the absurd report that she was encouraging the presumptuous advances of that factious rogue and Frondeur, young Darpent, whom our brother had the folly to introduce into the family.’

I did not answer, and perhaps he saw my blushes, for he added: 

’If I thought so for a moment, she may be assured that his muddy bourgeois blood should at once be shed to preserve the purity of the family with which I have the honour to be connected.’

He was terribly in earnest, he, a Colonel in His Majesty’s service, a father of a family, a staid and prudent man, and more than forty years old!  I durst say no more but that I though Eustace was the natural protector and head of the Ribaumont family.

’A boy, my dear sister; a mere hot-headed boy, and full of unsettled fancies besides.  In matters like this it is for me to think for the family.  My mother depends on me, and my sister may be assured that I shall do so.’

I wondered whether my mother had given him a hint, and I also considered whether to put Annora upon her guard; but there was already quite enough mutual dislike between her and our half-brother, and I thought it better not to influence it.  Solivet escorted us as far as his military duties permitted, which was almost to Calais, where we embarked for the Meuse, and there, when our passports had been examined and our baggage searched, in how different a world we found ourselves!  It was like passing from a half-cultivated, poverty-stricken heath into a garden, tilled to the utmost, every field beautifully kept, and the great haycocks standing up tall in the fields, with the hay-makers round them in their curious caps, while the sails of boats and barges glided along between the trees in the canals that traversed them unseen; and as to the villages, they were like toys, their very walks bright with coloured tiles, and the fronts of the houses shining like the face of a newly-washed child.  Indeed, as we found, the maids do stand in front of them every morning and splash them from eaves to foundation with buckets of water; while as to the gardens, and with palings painted of fanciful colours.  All along the rivers and canals there were little painted houses, with gay pavilions and balconies with fanciful carved railings overhanging the water, and stages of flower-pot arranged in them.  Sometimes a stout Dutch vrow with full, white, spotless sleeves, many-coloured substantial petticoats, gold buckles in her shoes, and a great white cap with a kind of gold band round her head, sat knitting there; or sometimes a Dutchman in trunk hose was fishing there.  We saw them all, for we had entered a barge or trekschuyt, towed by horses on the bank, a great flat-bottomed thing, that perfectly held our carriage.  Thus we were to go by the canals to the Hague, and no words can describe the strange silence and tranquillity of our motion along still waters.