"Feel for him, indeed! Ha, ha! But you can go on as you've begun. Your Cropheads have it all their own way here, and now; but the tide will turn sooner than you may think for. As for yourself, Eust, you may thank your stars you weren't among the rabble that overpowered me at Highnam. I sent half-a-dozen to their long account, and like as not you'd have been one of them." The implied superiority, even without the cruelty, was an impertinence. But Eustace Trevor, instead of taking it in that sense, and making angry retort, treated it rather as a joke, with a light laugh rejoining-- "Possibly had I been there, Rej, you wouldn't be here." At which he turned away, leaving his dark-browed cousin to count the change in satire that had been given him in full. CHAPTER THIRTY ONE. A LABYRINTH OF JEALOUSIES. No more on that night came the cousins together. If by chance they met, it was to pass one another as strangers unacquainted, exchanging neither speech nor look. Further attempt at reconciliation Eustace meant not to make now; he rather regretted having gone so far already. As for Reginald, he would not have listened to it. A sentiment inspired hostility to his cousin, far stronger than any vexation at his having forsaken the King's cause--altogether different. For it was jealousy; the same he had first felt during that exciting scene at Hollymead, and since brooded over till it had become an all-pervading passion. Eustace had replaced him in the affections of Vaga Powell--or he at least suspected it--that was provocation enough for antipathy, even hatred. And almost this he now entertained for him. Whatever the political disagreement among the others assembled at Montserrat House, there was no open exhibition of it Royalists and Roundheads stood in groups, or moved about, chatting in a familiar, many of them friendly, way. Officers who had been face to face on the battlefield, and done their best to take one another a lives, here met in mutual good humour, with laughing allusion to the changed circumstances. And when the dancing commenced, gentlemen might be seen, noted adherents of the Parliament, some wearing its uniform, with ladies as their partners strongly affected to the King's cause; while, in the couples _vis-a-vis_ to them, the political sentiments would be reversed. But the majority of those who danced, being the gay _jeunesse_, had no thought of politics, nor care for them one way or the other. They left, that to their elders, and those more seriously disposed; to themselves the delights of the dance being the controlling influence of the hour. Still there were some, even of the youthful, with whom this was but a secondary consideration. Sabrina Powell preferred strolling about the grounds with Sir Richard Walwyn, for they had much to say to one another. Of late their opportunities of meeting had been few and far between, and they were _fiancee_.