“Good Heavens!” exclaimed Emily, with sudden alarm, “I hope your friend did not tell him where you were.”
Harrington laughed.
“Not a bit of it,” he replied. “What do you think Jo told him? He told him with the utmost gravity that I resided in London. And when Lafitte looked incredulous, the jolly young Bohemian produced a London Directory he happened to have, and showed him my name among the Harringtons, offering to copy the address for him.”
Emily laughed delightedly.
“That was a brilliant fib, I declare,” said she. “What did Lafitte say?”
“Jo wrote me that he looked as blank as a board, declined the offer, and went away. I can imagine that Jo’s perfect soberness—for he’s an awfully solemn-looking fellow—together with the circumstance of the London Directory being in his possession, convinced Lafitte of the truth of the statement, and I’ll be bound he thinks Roux is on the other side of the Atlantic with my namesake.”
Harrington laughed, but his laugh ended in a deep and weary sigh. Emily took the letter from the envelope, opened it, and began to read, while Muriel looked with sad tranquillity out at the carriage windows. The letter, read slowly in the swaying carriage, ran thus:
Lafitte Plantation,
Parish of Avoyelles, Louisiana.
John Harrington, Esquire: