Alagwa listened with swimming brain. She was sure, sure, that this fiendishly clever French woman had penetrated her sex at a glance and that she had almost as swiftly guessed her identity with the missing girl. Exposure stared her in the face. Her plans rocked and crashed about her.
In the last three days Alagwa had come to think her disguise perfect and had built on it in many ways. By it she had hoped to carry out her pledge to Tecumseh. With her detection her mission must fail or, at least, be sharply circumscribed. She had known Jack for three days only, but she was very sure that, once he knew who she was, he would insist on taking her south with him to Alabama. She could not serve Tecumseh in Alabama. Moreover—her heart fluttered at the thought—Jack would no longer treat her with the same frank, free comradeship that had grown so dear to her. She did not know how he would treat her, but she was sure it would be different. And she did not want it to be different.
Desperately she sought for some way to ward off the threatened disclosure. The French woman seemed in no haste to speak; perhaps she might be induced to be silent. Alagwa remembered the roll of gold coins that Tecumseh had given her. Perhaps——
Suddenly she remembered that this woman had been her nurse when she was small. For the moment she had failed to realize this fact or to guess what it might mean. Now, that she did so, hope sprang up in her heart. If Fantine kept silence till she could speak to her alone she would throw herself on her mercy, tell her all that she had not already guessed, and beg for silence. Surely her old nurse might grant her that much. She did not know, she could not know, that her wishes would be law to one like Fantine, born on the estates of the great house from which she was descended.
Jack’s tale drew to a close. “That’s all, I reckon,” he ended. “Can you suggest anything, madame?”
Fantine’s lips twitched. Again she looked at Alagwa and then met Jack’s eyes squarely. “Non, Monsieur! I can suggest nothing, me!” she assented, deliberately. “But, monsieur, I make you very welcome to the house of Bondie. Is this”—she jerked her head toward Alagwa—“is this the boy you have rescue?” Her eyes bored into his.
Jack grinned. He was beginning to like the big French woman immensely. “I wouldn’t call it rescue, exactly,” he said. “But this is the boy.”
“Ah! la, la,” the French woman burst out. “Le pauvre garcon! But he is tired, yes, one can see that, and I am the big fool that I keep him and you standing. Ah, la, la, but we all are of blindness. Ah! yes but of a blindness. Entrez, entrez, messieurs! Peter will show the black monsieur where to put the horses. Entrez!”
Jack turned obediently toward the entrance, but Stickney halted. Plainly he was disappointed at Fantine’s lack of information. “Well! I’m off,” he declared. “I’ll be back later to go over things with you, Mr. Telfair.”
He strode away, and Jack and Alagwa followed Madame Fantine beneath the shed. Cato and Peter led the horses away.