“So there were at Marmaduke Hall. I was walking in the crowd on the Slip when someone put his hand into my pocket. There were so many people that I could not make out who it was, but I found that he had left your letter in my pocket.”
“My letter! In your pocket!”
“Yes, the letter you wrote last night.”
“I wrote no letter.”
“Yes you did. I received it.”
“Not from me. What was it like?”
“It was very short and said that the excuse of going to Albany would not do; that a messenger was coming from the manor-house to inquire after you and must find you dead. We thought it a piece of foolery at first, though who but you knew enough to write the letter. But first thing we knew, Mistress Miriam rode up to ask where you were. Lady Marmaduke saw her coming and suspected that the letter was true. So she rubbed my face with flour, found me a false beard that they used to act with when they gave plays there, and made me into your corpse in the twinkling of an eye. If the tender-hearted mistress had not been full of tears, she would never have taken me for you, nor for a corpse either, for I jumped when one of her tears fell plump into my eye. She just turned away, saying something about your sister had she been alive.”
I stifled a sob at this. Everyone but me was free to mourn aloud for Ruth.
“I sent no such letter, Pierre. What do you suppose it means?”
He had no explanation to give and I offered none of my own. But I knew beyond a doubt that Louis was true to his word. Who but Louis could have warned the Marmadukes in this way? If he had done so, then he must know who I was. Verily I was on slippery ground, but there I was, and there was neither drawing back nor going forward beyond a certain pace, and that pace was not in my own ruling. I began to think that the patroon had an enemy besides myself in the bosom of his household. Perhaps, after all, it would be through Louis that I should win out in the end; but I little foresaw the truth, or the trouble that was to come before the end, when the clouds should clear above the band of fallen troopers.