Now England was fighting France, not only because she was revolutionary France, but because of the murder of Louis XVI and for the restoration of the overthrown dynasty. Also she was in close sympathy with the war of the Vendee, to which she would lend all possible assistance. Philip argued that if it was his duty, as a captain in the English navy, to fight against the revolutionaries from without, he would be beyond criticism if, as the Duc de Bercy, he also fought against them from within.
Indeed, it was with this plain statement of the facts that the second military officer of the duchy had some days before been sent to the Court of St. James to secure its intervention for Philip’s freedom by exchange of prisoners. This officer was also charged with securing the consent of the English King for Philip’s acceptance of succession in the duchy, while retaining his position in the English navy. The envoy had been instructed by the Duke to offer his sympathy with England in the war and his secret adherence to the Royalist cause, to become open so soon as the succession through Philip was secured.
To Philip’s mind all that side of the case was in his favour, and sorted well with his principles of professional honour. His mind was not so acutely occupied with his private honour. To tell the Duke now of his marriage would be to load the dice against himself: he felt that the opportunity for speaking of it had passed.
He seated himself at a table and took from his pocket a letter of Guida’s written many weeks before, in which she had said firmly that she had not announced the marriage, and would not; that he must do it, and he alone; that the letter written to her grandfather had not been received by him, and that no one in Jersey knew their secret.
In reading this letter again a wave of feeling rushed over him. He realised the force and strength of her nature: every word had a clear, sharp straightforwardness and the ring of truth.
A crisis was near, and he must prepare to meet it.
The Duke had said that he must marry; a woman had already been chosen for him, and he was to meet her to-morrow. But, as he said to himself, that meant nothing. To meet a woman was not of necessity to marry her.