And I doubt me if your portion, so
long as I am living, be such as to tempt any man to wed such a little
fury, even were we at home.'
'Thanks for the hint, brother,' said Annora. 'I will take care that
any such suitor SHALL think me a fury.'
'Nay, child, in moderation! Violence is not strength. Nay, rather
it exhausts the forces. Resolution and submission are our
watchwords.'
How noble he looked as he said it, and how sad it was to part with
him! my mother wept most bitterly, and said it was cruel to leave us
to our fate, and that he would kill himself in the Dutch marshes; but
when the actual pain of parting with him was over, I am not sure that
she had not more hope of carrying out her wishes. She would have
begun by forbidding Annora to go, attended only by the servants, to
prayers at the England ambassador's: but Eustace had foreseen this,
and made arrangements with a good old knight and his lady, Sir
Francis Ommaney, always to call for my sister on their way to church,
and she was always ready for them. My mother used to say that her
devotion was all perverseness, and now and then, when more than
usually provoked with her, would declare that it was quite plain that
her poor child's religion was only a heresy, since it did not make
her a better daughter.
That used to sting Annora beyond all measure. Sometimes she would
reply by pouring out a catalogue of all the worst offences of our own
Church, and Heaven knows she could find enough of them! Or at others
she would appeal to the lives of all the best people she had ever
heard of in England, and especially of Eustace, declaring that she
knew she herself was far from good, but that was not the fault of her
religion, but of herself; and she would really strive to be
submissive and obliging for many days afterwards.
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