When it was ended she had ceased weeping, though Eustace said it was
piteous to see how changed she was, and the startled pleading look in
the dark eyes that used to look at him with such confiding love.
She said she had not heard those prayers since one day in the spring,
when she had stolen out to a house in town where there was a
gathering round one of the persecuted minister, and alas! her
stepdaughters had suspected her, and accused her to their father. He
pursued her, caused the train-bands to break in on the congregation
and the minister to be carried off to prison. It was this that had
brought on the sickness of which she declared that she hoped to have
died.
When Eustace would have argued against this wish, it brought out all
that he would fain never have heard nor known.
The poor young thing wished him to understand that she had never been
untrue to him in heart, as indeed was but too plain, and she had only
withdrawn her helpless passive resistance to the marriage with Mr.
van Hunker when Berenger's death had (perhaps willfully) been
reported to her as that of Eustace de Ribaumont. She had not known
him to be alive till she had seen him the day before. Deaths in her
own family had made her an heiress sufficiently well endowed to
excite Van Hunker's cupidity, but he had never affected much
tenderness for her. He was greatly her elder, she was his second
wife, and he had grown-up daughters who made no secret of their
dislike and scorn.
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