My astonishment was so complete that several minutes passed before I could find voice enough to ask what this deception meant. Annetje soon quieted her laughter and was ready to explain.

“My dear mistress,” she began, “is an angel out of heaven. She is always making chances for me to see Pierre. To-day, when she would not go to Yorke with you, I begged her to let me go in her place. She is so sweet. She can never bear to say ‘no’ to anything unless someone does wrong.”

Annetje indicated what would happen then by a disconsolate shrug of her shoulders.

“I don’t know why she should have taken such a liking to you. I dare say now, if you had been here longer—oh, I don’t mean that at all. I think you are very—very—Shall we ride towards Yorke?”

I could not help laughing a little at Annetje’s embarrassment.

“Mistress Annetje,” I said.

“I’m a bond-servant, sir. Plain Annetje, if you please.”

“Plain Annetje, then, what is your purpose now?”

“To put on my mask again. Now, I have it 215placed; will you tie it in the back? Look, here in my face; is it right? Do my ears show under the bottom?”

All this occurred on the Kissing Bridge. I made sure as I tied Annetje’s ribbons that she was still chuckling behind her mask, though she spoke like a Puritan.

“If you had kissed me I should have told my mistress. No I should not, neither. We never do anything she does not like. Do you know how you touched her heart by crying over that dear little Ruth we all loved so much? There you go again. You must be soft indeed. Mistress was telling me all about it. But here comes Pierre; I knew we should meet him.”

Sure enough, my friend Pierre was riding on the road ahead of us, and would meet us in a moment.

“I am going to play the mistress,” continued Annetje. “You two must ride behind me just the same.”

I did not know what to make of this meeting with Pierre. It was not his custom, as I knew very well, to ride a good horse. He could not be here by appointment or Annetje would not try to fool him as to who she really was. Perhaps he had ridden out in the mere hope of stumbling across me. He was on a horse I had seen in the Marmaduke stables, which fact confirmed me in this opinion. Perhaps he had matters of importance for my ear.

“Ha, Pierre,” I heard his sweetheart say in a high 216unnatural voice as they passed. “You see I ride in disguise now. Will you turn and accompany us? I have a new groom. Monsieur St. Vincent, this is Pierre, the barber.”

Pierre looked surprised. Evidently Annetje was not copying with success her gentle mistress’ manner. She seemed to know this fact, for her next words contained a half apology for her behavior.

“Don’t look amazed, my little friend. You see I have a disguise to keep up now, and I practice by the way. I should have brought Annetje to accompany me—ah, you wish I had? My father could not spare us both. You waste too much time on the little flirt, Pierre.”

“She is severe at times,” he answered mournfully. “I sometimes grow so weary waiting for her to come round.”

“Bah! You are a milky lover to say so. I’d wait a life-time if I were you. Alas, all men are alike! She is right when she says that you are a white-livered, chicken-hearted snip of a coward not worth the cheese in a mousetrap. Pooh, you are a fine lover. Good Lord deliver me!”

“Oh, Mistress Miriam, does she say all that? If you only knew how I do everything she tells me, and stand on my toes from morning till night when she is around, and I have corns to boot, and fetch her ribbons, and she won’t even cross the Kissing Bridge, where everybody does if they are no nearer than half a mile.”

217“To the kennels with your love if that is all it’s worth.”

In her last exclamation Annetje had dropped into her natural voice. Pierre was so down-hearted that he did not notice the change; but Annetje, fearing to expose herself further, galloped ahead and Pierre took his place by my side. As for me, I had little enough of sympathy for him, and felt more in a mood for laughing. If there is anything on this earth I cannot abide it is a whiny lover. I remember once a fellow whose opinion of himself was better than most folks’ and he used to go about from morning to night with his face as long as a cucumber thinking all the while of what he might have been doing while another fellow came in and ran off with the prize before his eyes. I was minded to tell Pierre the story of this fellow and how he went into a decline and died without as much sympathy as would go to make an ordinary case of the blues, but he got so quick to work upon his other concerns that I forgot all about it till the time was past.

“This is an odd manner for the young mistress,” he said. “But I suppose she is glad to get out again. Annetje says that the patroon keeps her close. I told her that I should ride along the road here every day. I did not know when I should meet you, but I knew that you would come along some day. I wish Annetje had come.”

218“There were strange happenings at the manor-house to-day, Pierre.”

“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.”

219I 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.

“Yonder is the city wall,” said Pierre. “I had best not go into town by your side. We should not be seen together, so I will just take my leave.”

He left me abruptly and turned down a side lane almost before I knew that he was gone; then I galloped ahead to overtake Annetje Dorn. We entered the city, riding one abreast the other. We had no sooner reached the open space before the Stadt Huys than a new adventure presented itself, an adventure which tested my companion’s nerve to the utmost.

220“There is the Earl of Bellamont,” she said. “He will take me for my mistress and speak to me. What shall I do?”

“You must stick it out,” I answered. “Look sharp now. This must be gone through with.”

When we first spied the Earl we were in the midst of a large open place near the fort. Even at that distance I could mark the easy, erect bearing that made him the envy of all the horseback riders in the province. He was bowing right and left to the many persons he met on every hand, and so did not see us until we were quite upon him. When he did see us, however, he bowed low as if he had met a queen. He was much different in this respect from his wife. The Earl, in fact, was free with the ladies and cordial to everyone, but it was a well-known piece of gossip that he would not let his wife stir from the fort without a watch. She had been wild in her youth, and had married him when she was but a child. Now he was jealous as a woman about her, but with himself it was a different matter altogether.

“A welcome greeting, Mistress Van Volkenberg.” He knew her well enough by the trappings of her horse, and by the red band on my arm. “I must tell my Lady Bellamont that you ride now with a mask. It has always been her wish, you know, that the maidens of the province should not be so free with their pretty faces.”

“Your Excellency speaks sweet flattery,” answered 221Annetje. The bridle trembled in her hand, but her voice rang like metal.

“And your father—is the patroon well?”

His face clouded a bit, I thought, as he said this; but there were gentlemen in Yorke in those days that have passed away, and the Earl of Bellamont never failed in courtesy to a woman.

“My father is well, your Excellency. This is a new retainer of his—Monsieur St. Vincent.”

“Ah, Monsieur St. Vincent, you are welcome to the province. It is always our wish to obtain such men as you. Broad shoulders and a true heart, they are the strength of Yorke.” He turned to Annetje. “We must see your pretty face unmasked at the Assembly Ball—and Monsieur St. Vincent also,” bowing to me.

He would have invited the devil himself if he had come in company with a lady; but had he known what a revelation I should bring to that public ball the color would have left his cheeks. But that is to come. A few more commonplace remarks passed between us and then we parted.

“I can understand it now,” said Annetje as we rode towards home. “I often wonder how he keeps it all away from our sweet mistress; but if all the men are like that—no wonder. Who would have thought that he was talking to the daughter of his worst enemy? Yet she—God bless her innocent heart—she does not even know that her father is in disgrace with the privy-council.”

222“But you seem to.”

“Ay, Pierre,” she answered, indicating the source of her information.

She turned towards me, taking off her mask as she did so. We were out in the country again, following a by-path north of the city where there was no longer any danger of meeting folk to recognize us. I had been used to see in her a merry face sparkling with humor. Now, when she unmasked, her brows were puckered up, and her childish face wore a sober, puzzled look.

“Ay, Pierre. I love him if I do tease him. What is more, I trust him, too. He knows me well. Your secret is safe with me, Monsieur Le Bourse. You see that I know all about you. I brought you out this afternoon because I knew that we should meet Pierre. I dare say you had something for his ear if he had none for yours. I do not know why you are here. I do not even ask. Pierre is your safety and I am satisfied. But beware; I am a watchdog to my mistress. If you do anything against her I’ll cut your throat.”

“Annetje,” I cried. “You can trust me there. I shall protect her with my life for the love she bore my sister. Tell me one thing. How is it that she can stand what is going on at Hanging Rock?”

“She does not know it.”

“How can she help knowing it?”

“Because we all love her. Even the patroon would lay down his life for her. Do you suppose 223he is afraid to have her know the truth? It is because he loves her and would save her pain.”

“I have seen him try to strike her with a glass.”

“It was in anger. He has a strange infirmity that comes upon him suddenly. He does not know what he is doing when it has got hold of him. She forgives all that, her heart is so big.”

“But last night—the death of Ronald Guy?”

“Hush, not a word of that before her. She knows nothing of all that.”

“But she does know it. She was on the terrace. I saw her with my own eyes.”

“Yet she does not know it. We are used to the Red Band drilling at night. I knew what was c............