She was a pretty, fair child of three years
old, with enough of Dutch serenity and gravity not to be troublesome
after the first shock was over, and she beguiled many of his weary
hours of confinement by the games in which he joined her. He sent
out to by for her a jointed baby, which Annora dressed for her, and,
as she wrote, my lord was as much interested about the Lady
Belphoebe's robes (for so had he named her) as was Emilia, and he was
her most devoted knight, daily contriving fresh feasts and pageants
for her ladyship. Nan declared that she was sometimes quite jealous
of Belphoebe and her little mistress; but, on the whole, I think she
enjoyed the months when she had Eustace practically to herself.
For we were separated for months. Poor Cornelia's illness was very
short, the chill taken at the sleighing party had been fatal to her
at the beginning of the complaint, and she expired on the third day,
with hardly any interval of consciousness.
Her sister, Veronica, was my chief charge. I had to keep her
constantly rolled in red cloth in a dark room, while the fever ran
very high, and she suffered much. I think she was too ill to feel
greatly the discomfort of being tended by a person who could not
speak her language, and indeed necessity enabled me to understand a
tongue so much like English, which indeed she could herself readily
speak when her brain began to clear. This, however, was not for full
a fortnight, and in the meantime Mynheer van Hunker was growing worse
and worse, and he died on the sixteenth day of his illness.
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