Therefore, though I
could not but hope that the numerous difficulties in the way might
prevent her from being linked to his fate, and actually sharing his
ruin.
She was not in my hands, and I had not to decide, so I let her talk
freely to me, and certainly, when we were alone together, her tongue
ran on nothing else. I found that she hoped that Eustace would
invite her lover to the Hague, and let them be wedded there by one of
the refugee English clergy, and then they would be ready to meet
anything together; but that M. Darpent was withheld by filial
scruples, which actuated him far more than any such considerations
moved her, and that he also had such hopes for his Parliament that he
could not throw himself out of the power of serving it at this
critical time, a doubt which she appreciated, looking on him as equal
to any hero in Plutarch's LIVES.
Our brother De Solivet met us, and conducted into Amiens, where he
had secured charming rooms for us. He was very full of an excellent
marriage that had been offered to him for one of his little
daughters, so good that he was going to make the other take the veil
in order that her sister's fortune might be adequate to the occasion;
and he regretted my having left Paris, because he intended to have
set me to discover which had the greatest inclination to the world
and which the chief vocation for the cloister. Annora's Protestant
eyes grew large and round with horror, and she exclaimed at last:
'So that is the way in which you French fathers deliberate how to
make victims of your daughters?'
He made her a little bow, and said, with is superior fraternal air:
'You do not understand, my sister.
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