“Will you read it, and tell me what answer you would like me to return.”
“Hardly like her usual writing--though there's her own strange S!” remarked John as he looked at it.
“Does she always make an S like that?” asked my uncle, with something peculiar in his tone, I thought.
“Always--like a snake just going to strike.”
My uncle's face grew ghastly pale. He almost snatched the letter from John's hand, looked at it, gave it back to him, and, to our dismay, left the room.
“What can be the matter, John?” I said, my heart sinking within me.
I dared not. I had often seen him _like_ that before walking out into the night; but there was something in his face now which I had not seen there before. It looked as if some terrible suspicion were suddenly confirmed.
“You see what my mother is after!” said John. “You have now to believe _her_, that I am subject to fits of insanity, or to believe _me_, that there is nothing she will not do to get her way.”
“Her object is clear,” I replied. “But if she thinks to fool my uncle, she will find herself mistaken!”
“She hopes to fool both you and your uncle,” he rejoined. “The only wise thing I could do, she will handle so as to convince any expert of my madness--I mean, my coming to you! My reasons will go for nothing--less than no-thing--with any one she chooses to bewitch. She will look at me with an anxious love no doctor could doubt. No one can know _you_ do not know that I am not mad--or at least subject to attacks of madness!”
It seemed cruel of him to tease me so; but I saw presently why he did it: he thought his mother's letter had waked a doubt in my uncle; and he wanted me not to be vexed with my uncle, even if he deserted him and went over to his mother's side.
“I love your uncle,” he said. “I know he is a true man! I _will_ not be angry with him if my mother do mislead him. The time will come when he will know the truth. It must appear at last! I shall have to fight her alone, that's all! The worst is, if he thinks with my mother I shall have to go at once!--If only somebody would sell my horse for me!”
I guessed that his mother kept him short of money, and remembered with gladness that I was not quite penniless at the moment.
“In the meantime, you must keep as quiet as you can, John,” I said. “Where is the good of planning upon an _if_? To trust is to get ready, uncle says. Trust is better than foresight.”