“And you had better now return to the classroom, Miss Bozerne,” said Miss Furness, who had seemed in a fidget ever since I had followed them into the place.
“Ah, yes—please leave us now, Miss Bozerne,” said Mrs Blunt. “Of course we can depend upon you, my child?”
I promised all they wished, and was going across the hall, when I met James, with a piece of paper in his hand.
“Please, miss, where’s Monser Tirrel?—a boy just brought this for him.”
“I’ll take it in to him,” I said, with the blood seeming to run in a torrent to my heart; and there I stood, with the piece of a leaf of a pocket-book in my hand. It was not doubled up, and as I glanced down upon it I could see that it was scribbled over, evidently hastily, in pencil. I was about to carry it into the breakfast-room, when a word caught my eye; and telling myself it was not dishonourable, and that I had some right to know the secrets of Achille, I felt that I must read it through.
“He says that I am his own, so that I have a right to see his correspondence,” I said to myself, trying to find an excuse for the deceitful act; and then trembling all over, I read, hastily scrawled—
“Monsieur,—Vous m’avez insulté affreusement. Si vous n’êtes pas poltrone, vous serez, sans ami, dans les prairies au moulin à une heure.
“Giulio Pazzoletto.”
“Oh, horror!” I ejaculated, “it is a challenge; and if I give it to him, that horrid Italian will shoot or stab to death my poor Achille! What shall I do—what shall I do?”
There I stood, racked with anguish, till I heard footsteps approaching, when I fled into the schoolroom, where there was such a noise, and all the pupils flocked round me directly, to ask no end of questions; but I was so agitated that I could not speak. However, the first thing I did was to spitefully bite the wicked, murderous note into fragments, and scatter them about the place; and then, recalling Mrs Blunt’s last words, I was so retentive of the information the girls were all eager to acquire, that they one and all sided against me, and said I was “a proud, stuck-up, deceitful crocodile.”
“I don’t care, children,” I said, haughtily—for I was more at ease now that I knew he would not get the note—“I don’t care, children, Mrs Blunt said that I was not to talk about it.”