'Yes, you must see her,' said Lucy.
'Well, what more were you going to say, Lucy?'
'I was only thinking,' said Lucy, as she raised her eyes to him,
'how sorry she will be that she let them write that letter.'
Berenger laughed, pleased with the simplicity of Lucy's admiration,
but with modesty and common sense enough to answer, 'No fear of
that, Lucy, for an heiress, with all the court gallants of France
at her feet.'
'Ah, but you!' 'I am all very well here, when you have never seen anybody but
lubberly Dorset squires that never went to London, nor Oxford, nor
beyond their own furrows,' said Berenger; 'but depend upon it, she
has been bred up to care for all the airs and graces that are all
the fashion at Paris now, and will be as glad to be rid of an
honest man and a Protestant as I shall to be quit of a court puppet
and a Papist. Shall you have finished my point-cuffs next week,
Lucy? Depend upon it, no gentleman of them all will wear such
dainty lace of such a fancy as those will be.' And Lucy smiled, well pleased.
Coming from the companionship of Eustacie to that of gentle Lucy
had been to Berenger a change from perpetual warfareto perfect
supremacy, and his preference to his little sister, as he had been
taught to call her from the first, had been loudly expressed.
Brother and sister they had ever since considered themselves, and
only within the last few months had possibilities been discussed
among the elders of the family, which oozing out in some mysterious
manner, had become felt rather than known among the young people,
yet without altering the habitual terms that existed between them.
Both were so young that love was the merest, vaguest dream to them;
and Lucy, in her quiet faith that Berenger was the most beautiful,
excellent, and accomplished cavalier the earth could afford, was
little troubled about her own future share in him. She seemed to
be promoted to belong to him just as she had grown up to curl her
hair and wear ruffs and farthingales. And to Berenger Lucy was a
very pleasant feature in that English home, where he had been far
happier than in the uncertainties of Chateau Leurre, between his
naughty playfellow, his capricious mother, and morose father. If
in England his lot was to be cast, Lucy was acquiesced in willingly
as a portion of that lot.