“Bah!” he said, “let her go. There is no stopping them, when they are like that. It is the curse—of the Garden of Eden.”
CHAPTER XXV. A DESPATCH.
In counsel it is good to see dangers; and in execution not to
see them unless they be very great.
Mathilde had told Desiree that Colonel de Casimir made no mention of Charles in his letter to her. Barlasch was able to supply but little further information on the matter.
“It was given to me by the Captain Louis d'Arragon at Thorn,” he said. “He handled it as if it were not too clean. And he had nothing to say about it. You know his way, for the rest. He says little; but he knows the look of things. It seemed that he had promised to deliver the letter—for some reason, who knows what? and he kept his promise. The man was not dying by any chance—that De Casimir?”
And his little sharp eyes, reddened by the smoke of camp-fires, inflamed by the glare of sun on snow, searched her face. He was thinking of the treasure.
“Oh no!”
“Was he ill at all?”
“He was in bed,” answered Desiree, doubtfully.