I slept soundly
after my day of adventure. I dreamed that I rode into London
behind the Duke, amid all the glory of victory, with the people
flinging flowers at us. But dreams go by contraries, the wise
women say.
I was a full fortnight, or a little more, a prisoner in that
house. They treated me very kindly. Aurelia was like an elder
sister. Old Sir Travers used to jest at my being a rebel. But I
was a prisoner, shut in, watched, kept close. The kindness jarred
upon me. It was treating me like a child, when I was no longer a
child. I had for some wild weeks been doing things which few men
have the chance of doing. Perhaps, if I had confided all that I
felt to Aurelia, she would have cleared away my troubles, made me
see that the Duke's cause was wrong, that my father would wish
his son well out of civil broils, however just, that I had better
give the promise that they asked from me. But I never confided
really fully in her. I moped a good deal, much worried in my
mind. I began to get a lot of unworthy fancies into my head,
silly fancies, which an honest talk would have scattered at once.
I began to think from their silence about the Duke's doings that
his affairs were prospering, that he was conquering, or had
conquered, that I was being held by this loyalist family as a
hostage. It was silly of me; but although in many ways I was
a skilled man of affairs, I had only the brain of a child, I
could not see the absurdity of what I came to believe.
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