“But Mistress Margery is not a Catholic!” said I.

His look forgave the protest in the words.

“Indeed, she is, my son.  Has she not told you?”

Now truly she had not told me so in any measured word or phrase; and yet I might have guessed it, since she had often spoken lovingly of this same Father Matthieu.  And yet it was incredible to me.

“But how—­I do not understand how that can be,” I stammered.  “Surely, she told me she was of Huguenot blood on the mother’s side, and that is—­”

The missionary’s smile was lenient still, but full of meaning.

“Not all who wander from the Catholic fold are lost forever, Captain Ireton.  The mother of this demoiselle lived all her life a Protestant, I think, but when she came to die she sent for me.  And that is how her child was sent to France and grew up convent-bred.  Monsieur Stair gave his promise at the mother’s death-bed, and though he liked it not, he kept it.”

“Aha, I see.  And for this single lamb of your scant fold you brave the terrors of our heretic backwoods?  It does you credit, Father Matthieu.  The war fills all horizons now, mayhap, but I have seen the time in Mecklenburg when your cassock would have been a challenge to the mob.”

His smile was quite devoid of bitterness.  “The time has not yet passed,” he said, gently.  “I have been six weeks on the way from Maryland hither, hiding in the forest by day and faring on at night.  Indeed, I was in hiding on a neighboring plantation when our demoiselle’s messenger found me.”

This put me keen upon remembering what had gone before; how he had said at first that she had sent for him.  I thought it strange, knowing how perilous the time and place must be for such as he.  But not until he rose and, bidding me good day, left me to myself, did I so much as guess the thing his coming meant.  When I had guessed it; when I put this to that—­her telling me Sir Francis had proposed for her, and this her sending for the priest—­the madness of my love for her was as naught compared to that anger which seized and racked me.

I know not how the hours of this black day were made to come and go, grinding me to dust and ashes in their passage, yet leaving me alive and keen to suffer at the end.

A thousand times that day I lived in torment through the scene in which the priest had doubtless come to play his part of joiner.  The stage for it would be the great room fronting south; the room my father used to call our castle hall.  For guests I thought there would be space enough and some to spare, for, as you know, our Mecklenburg was patriot to the core.  But as to this, the bridegroom’s troopers might fill out the tale, and in my heated fancy I could see them grouped beneath the candle-sconces with belts and baldrics fresh pipe-clayed, and shakos doffed, and sabretaches well in front.  “A man full-grown—­a soldier,” she had said; and trooper-guests were fitting in such case.