And so I let him lead me away.  I pressed him for news of the Indian situation, but he only shrugged and said, “Wait.  Matters are quiescent enough on the surface.  We will talk later.”

It was strange.  I bathed and dressed quite as I had done many times before, when I had come in from months in camp; quite as if there were no woman, and as if massacre were not knocking at the window.  But I carried a black weight that made my tongue leaden, and I excused myself from table on the plea of going through my mail.

The news the letters brought was good but unimportant.  In the Montreal packet was a sealed line in a woman’s hand.

“I have tracked my miniature,” it read.  “I mourned its disappearance; I should welcome its return.  Can you find excuses for the man who took it from me?  If you can, I beg that you let me hear them.  He was once my friend, and I am loath to think of him hardly.”  The note bore no signature.  It was dated at the governor’s house at Montreal, and directed to me at Michillimackinac.

I was alone with Dubisson and I turned to him.  “Madame Bertheau is at Montreal?”

He shrugged.  “So I hear.”

“She has come to see her brother?”

Now he grinned.  “Ostensibly, monsieur.”

There was no need to hide my feeling from Dubisson, so I sat with my chin sunk low and thought it over.  I was ill pleased.  I had been long and openly in Madame Bertheau’s train, and this was a land of gossips.  I turned to the lieutenant.

“Madame de Montlivet, where is she housed?”

He looked relieved.  “She has a room next door.  Starling we have taken in with us.  I would rather have a tethered elk.  He is so big he fills the whole place.”

Now, square issues please me.  “Dubisson, why has no one offered to take me to my wife?”

The man laughed rather helplessly. “’T is from no lack of respect for either of you, monsieur.  But you said nothing, and Starling”——­

“Yes, it is from Starling that I wish to hear.”

“Well, Starling has said——­ Monsieur, why repeat the man’s gossip?”

“Go on, Dubisson.”

“After all, it is only what the Englishman has said.  Madame, so far as I know, has said nothing.  But Starling has told us that yours was a marriage of form only,—­that the woman consented under stress, and now”——­

“And now regretted it?”

“I am only quoting Starling.  Monsieur, would you like to see your wife?”

I rose.  “Yes.  Will you send word and see if I may?”

Dubisson bowed and left me with a speed that gave me a wry smile.  The laughter-loving lieutenant hated embarrassment as he did fast-days, and I had given him a bad hour.

He was back before I thought it possible.

“She will see you at once in the commandant’s waiting-room.”  He looked at me oddly.

“Your wife is a queenly woman, monsieur.”