Amyas told him, wondering at his eagerness, for he had never had the least suspicion of Eustace's love.
Eustace shrieked aloud.
"Fool, fool that I have been! Caught in my own trap! Villain, villain that he is! After all he promised me at Lundy!"
And springing up, Eustace stamped up and down the room, gnashing his teeth, tossing his head from side to side, and clutching with outstretched hands at the empty air, with the horrible gesture (Heaven grant that no reader has ever witnessed it!) of that despair which still seeks blindly for the object which it knows is lost forever.
Amyas sat thunderstruck. His first impulse was to ask, "Lundy? What knew you of him? What had he or you to do at Lundy?" but pity conquered curiosity.
"Oh, Eustace! And you then loved her too?"
"Don't speak to me! Loved her? Yes, sir, and had as good a right to love her as any one of your precious brotherhood of the Rose. Don't speak to me, I say, or I shall do you a mischief!"
So Eustace knew of the brotherhood too! Amyas longed to ask him how; but what use in that? If he knew it, he knew it; and what harm? So he only answered—
"My good cousin, why be wroth with me? If you really love her, now is the time to take counsel with me how best we shall"
Eustace did not let him finish his sentence. Conscious that he had betrayed himself upon more points than one, he stopped short in his walk, suddenly collected himself by one great effort, and eyed Amyas from underneath his eyebrows with the old down look.
"How best we shall do what, my valiant cousin?" said he in a meaning and half-scornful voice. "What does your most chivalrous Brotherhood of the Rose purpose in such a case?"
Amyas, a little nettled, stood on his guard in return, and answered bluntly—
"What the Brotherhood of the Rose will do, I can't yet say. What it ought to do, I have a pretty sure guess."
"So have I. To hunt her down as you would an outlaw, because forsooth she has dared to love a Catholic; to murder her lover in her arms, and drag her home again stained with his blood, to be forced by threats and persecution to renounce that Church into whose maternal bosom she has doubtless long since found rest and holiness!"
"If she has found holiness, it matters little to me where she has found it, Master Eustace: but that is the very point that I should be glad to know for certain."
"And you will go and discover for yourself?"
"Have you no wish to discover it also?"
"And if I had, what would that be to you?"
"Only," said Amyas, trying hard to keep his temper, "that if we had the same purpose, we might sail in the same ship."
