“Yes, good Cato,” I made answer to him and I was indeed glad that I had now of a habit put his gift under the heel of my left foot.  It gave me great courage.

“De Governor is up in his room and you kin go right up.  I never heard of no such doings as is going on in dis house dis night with that there wild man with a gun five feet long, coming and going like de wind.  Go on up, honey, and see what you kin do to dem with dat hoodoo.”  With which information good Cato started me up the stairs.  “First door to the right, front, and don’t knock,” he called in a whisper that might have come from his tomb in death as he slowly retired into the darkness below with his candle.

For a very long minute I stood before that door in the dim light that came through one of the wide windows from the moon without.

“What is this madness that you perform, Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye?” I made demand of myself while my knees trembled in the trousers of heavy gray worsted.

“Robert Carruthers goes to his chief in an hour of need and he is descended of that Madam Donaldson who had no fear of the Indian or the bear when there was danger to her beloved,” I made answer to myself and softly I turned the handle of that door and entered the room of the Gouverneur Faulkner.

“Is that you, Robert?” came a question in his voice from a large table over by the window.  The room was entirely in shadow, except for the shaded light upon the table, under whose rays I remarked the head and shoulders of that Gouverneur Faulkner, at whose bidding I had come out into the dead of the night.  “Come over here and walk softly, so as not to stir up Jenkins,” he commanded me and I went immediately to his side, even if I did experience a difficulty in the breath of Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye.

“What is it that you wish, my Gouverneur Faulkner?” I asked as I looked down upon him as he sat with a paper in his hand regarding it intently.  And as I looked I observed that he, as well as I, had not entirely disrobed after that very brilliant reception.  He had discarded his coat of the raven and also what is called a vest in America, and he was very beautiful to me in the whiteness of his very fine linen above which his dark bronze hair with its silver crests, that I had always observed to be in a very sleek order, was tossed into a mop that resembled the usual appearance of my own.  His eyes were very deep under their heavy lashes but of the brilliancy of the stars in the blackness of a dark night.

“Sit down here under the light beside me,” was his next command to me, and he reached out one of his slender and powerful hands and drew me down into a chair very close beside him.

“What is it?” I asked as my head came so close to his that I felt the warmth of his breath on my cold cheek.

“Hold these two fragments of paper together and translate the French written upon them literally,” he said to me as he handed me two small pieces of paper upon which there was writing.