'
'She seems to have no intention of putting herself under my
influence,' I said, rather hurt.
'She soon will, when she finds out your English heart,' said Eustace.
'The poor child is a most unwilling exile, and is acting like our old
friends the urchins, opposing the prickles to all. But if my mother
has Annora to watch over, you also have a charge. A boy of this
little man's rank,' he said, stroking the glossy curls of Gaspard,
who was leaning on my lap, staring up in wonder at the unknown tongue
spoken by his uncle, 'and so near the age of the king, will certainly
be summoned to attend at court, and if you shut yourself up, you will
be unable to follow him and guide him by your counsel.'
That was the chief of what my dear brother said to me on that
morning. I wrote it down at the moment because, though I trusted his
wisdom and goodness with all my heart, I thought his being a
Protestant might bias his view in some degree, and I wanted to know
whether the Abbe thought me bound by my plans of devotion, which
happily had not been vows.
And he fully thought my brother in the right, and that it was my duty
to remain in the world, so long as my son needed me there; while, as
to any galling from coming under authority again, that was probably
exactly what my character wanted, and it would lessen the danger of
dissipation. Perhaps I might have been in more real danger in
queening it at Nid de Merle than in submitting at Paris.
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