I saw Davilo in the morning before we started.  After some conversation on business, he said—­

“And pardon a suggestion which I make, not as in charge of your affairs, but as responsible to our supreme authority for your safety.  No correspondence should pass from your household unscrutinised; and if there be such correspondence, I must ask you to place in my hand, for the purpose of our quest, not any message, but some of the slips on which messages have been written.  This may probably furnish precisely that tangible means of relation with some one acquainted with the conspiracy for which we have sought in vain.”

My unwillingness to meddle with feminine correspondence was the less intelligible to him that, as the master alone commands the household telegraph, he knew that it must have passed through my hands.  I yielded at last to his repeated urgency that a life more precious than mine was involved in any danger to myself, so far as to promise the slips required, to furnish a possible means of rapport between the clairvoyante and the enemy.

I returned to the house in grave thought.  Eunane. corresponded by the telegraph with some schoolmates; Eive, I fancied, with three or four of those ladies with whom, accompanying me on my visits, she had made acquaintance.  But I hated the very thought of domestic suspicion, and, adhering to my original resolve, refused to entertain a distrust that seemed ill-founded and far-fetched.  If there had been treachery, it would be impossible to obtain any letters that might have been preserved without resorting to a compulsion which, since both Eunane and Eive had written in the knowledge that their letters passed unread, would seem like a breach of faith.  I asked, however, simply, and giving no reason, for the production of any papers received and preserved by either.  Eive, with her usual air of simplicity, brought me the two or three which, she said, were all she had kept.  Eunane replied with a petulance almost amounting to refusal, which to some might have suggested suspicion; but which to me seemed the very last course that a culprit would have pursued.  To give needless offence while conscious of guilt would have been the very wantonness of reckless temper.

“Bite your tongue, and keep your letters,” I said sharply.

Turning to Eive and looking at the addresses of hers, none of which bore the name of any one who could be suspected of the remotest connection with a political plot—­

“Give me which of these you please,” I said, taking from her hand that which she selected and marking it.  “Now erase the writing yourself and give me the paper.”

This incident gave Eunane leisure to recover her temper.  She stood for a few moments ashamed perhaps, but, as usual, resolute to abide by the consequences of a fault.  When she found that my last word was spoken, her mood changed at once.

“I did not quite like to give you Velna’s letters.  They are foolish, like mine; and besides——­But I never supposed you would let me refuse.  What you won’t make me do, I must do of my own accord.”