Even yet she must cross the room to adjust the curtains before she found voice to continue. She resumed her seat by my side and cleared her throat two or three times.
“It is seven or eight months since your sister entered service at the manor-house. For a while all went well enough. I heard often about her through Annetje Dorn. But things never go well there for long at a time. I saw Ruth now and then and her cheeks grew pale and her eyes hollow. I think she must have done much weeping. She found her lot a hard one, much harder perhaps because the patroon cast longing glances at her pretty, winsome face. Yet he held her only as his chattel. One morning she was found in her bed—dead, Michael Le Bourse—dead on the twelfth day of last July—I say the twelfth of July.”
Short as her narrative had been, Lady Marmaduke had worked herself into a state of excitement that I could not comprehend. It was certainly not due to me nor to her interest in my affairs, for she rose and strode up and down the room as if talking to herself and utterly oblivious of my presence, all the time snapping her long fingers in anger. A hound asleep in one corner of the room awoke and came leaping towards her. She exclaimed a sharp word of rebuke and the dog slunk back with his tail between his legs. After five minutes more of this behavior she stopped in front of me, her tall, spare figure swaying slowly like a tree trunk. I rose instinctively.
“Yes, Monsieur Le Bourse, I remember the day well. On the twelfth of July Sir Evelin Marmaduke was lost on the river. His boat drifted with the tide and was crushed to kindling wood in Hell-Gate. So runs the tale of my husband’s death. It was Kilian Van Volkenberg brought that news. Why should he be the first to know it? Before God, he shall have his reward! And the next day your sister was found dead in her bed.”
Again she fell to walking back and forth through the room, now like a moving statue between me and the window, now rustling darkly against the hangings on the wall. Soon she was master of her passion and returned to my side.
“There is no truth known of how she met her death. Without doubt she tried once to escape. She was followed and captured by the patroon, brought back and branded on the shoulder with a red hot iron.”
A cry of horror burst from my lips. She caught me by the arm.
“Hush! It was unskilfully done, says the patroon. Her weak body could not stand the torture and she died. That is his story, but it is a lie. It is a lie—for I—I stood in the dead of night and saw the grave dug up. I looked at her body with my own eyes. She had not been branded.”
We had resumed our seats. I felt like moaning but I had no voice for words. This strong woman charmed me as by a spell. Her manner showed that there was still worse to come.
“Yet she had died, and in some way that the patroon found it necessary to lie about in order to conceal the truth. Annetje has told Pierre that on the night your sister died she is sure she heard the patroon visit your sister’s room.