While she was gone, Eustace awoke, and presently began talking to me, and asking me about all that had passed, and about which we had not dared to write.  Nan, he said, had told him her story, and he was horrified at the peril I had incurred.  I replied that was all past, and was as nothing compared with the consequences, of which my sister had no doubt informed him.  ‘Yes,’ he said, ’I did not think it of Darpent.’  I said I supposed that the young man could not help the original presumption of loving Annora, and that I could bear testimony that they had been surprised into confessing it to one another.  He sighed, and said:  ’True.  I had thought that the barrier between the robe and the sword was so fixed in a French mind that I should as soon have expected Nicolas to aspire to Mademoiselle de Ribaumont’s hand as Clement Darpent.’

’But in her own eyes she is not Mademoiselle de Ribaumont so much as Mistress Annora Ribmont,’ I said; ’and thus she treated him in a manner to encourage his audacity.’

‘Even so,’ said Eustace, ’and Annora is no mere child, not one of your jeunes filles, who may be disposed of at one’s will.  She is a woman grown, and has been bred in the midst of civil wars.  She had refused Harry Merrycourt before we left home, and she knows how to frighten away all the suitors our mother would find for her.  Darpent is deeply worthy.  We should esteem and honour him as a gentleman in England; and were he there, and were our Church as once it was, he would be a devout and thankful member of it.  Margaret, we must persuade my mother to consent.’

I could not help rejoicing; and then he added:  ’The King has been well received, and is about to be crowned in Scotland.  It may well be that our way home may be opened.  In that case, Meg, you, my joint-heiresses, would have something to inherit, and before going to Scotland I had drawn up a will giving you and your Gaspard the French claims, and Annora the English estates.  I know the division is not equal; but Gaspard can never be English, and Annora can never be French; and may make nearly as much of an Englishman of Darpent as our grandfather was.’

‘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.