At this I must needs read the letter, with the lad looking on as if he would eat me. 'Twas dated at Winnsborough, and was brief and to the point.
Monsieur:
"When last we met you said the Church might undo what the Church had done. I have spoken to the good Père Matthieu, and he has consented to write to the Holy Father at Rome. But it is necessary that he should have your declaration. Since the matter is of your own seeking, mayhap you can devise a way to communicate with Père Matthieu, who is at present with us under our borrowed roof here."
That was all, and it was signed only with her initial. I read it through twice and then again to gain time. For Dick was waiting.
"'Tis a mere formal matter of business," said I, when I could put him off no longer.
"Business?" he queried, the red light of suspicion coming and going in his eye. "What business can you have with Mistress Madge Stair, pray?"
"'Tis about—it touches the title to Appleby Hundred," said I, equivocating as clumsily as a schoolboy caught in a fault. "Of course you know that the confiscation act of the North Carolina Congress re-established my right and title to the estate?"
"No," said he; "you never told me." Then: "She writes you about this?"
"About a matter touching it, as I say."
"As you did not say," he growled; after which a silence came and sat between us, I holding the open letter in my hand and he staring gloomily at the back of it.
When the silence grew portentous I told him of my design to go a-spying. He looked me in the eye and his smile was not pleasant to see.