“Dead!” echoed the patroon.
At that moment I felt Louis Van Ramm’s fingers close on my wrist like a vise. In an instant he relaxed his grip, for the patroon turned to look at me.
“You are pale,” he said abruptly. “You should be hungry.”
But of the two, he must have been the paler.
However, he would have nothing more to say to me till I had eaten. I was not sorry, for, in very truth, I was as hungry as a bear, and the silence that followed gave me time to think over what had happened.
Evidently Louis’s warning and the locking of my door were pieces of the same cloth. No doubt of Louis’s honesty came into my mind. I knew by an experience I had had in France that a deformed person like this dwarf was likely, however vicious he might be at heart, to feel a dog-like attachment to any one who had befriended him. The fact that Meg was his mother was enough to justify my belief in his honesty. I felt now that, beyond peradventure, I might trust in him. But the suspicion he had warned me against—what was that? What could it be but that I was discovered? I recalled the fact that both Lady Marmaduke and Pierre had recognized me. Had the patroon? I confess to trembling at the moment, and I looked up to see if I were noticed.
“Your hand trembles,” said the patroon. Trust him for seeing everything that was in sight!
“Trembles,” I answered. “Which?”
“Your right,” he replied, with a vicious smile on his dark features.
I stretched my right hand out before him as steady as his own.