University of Virginia Library

49. CHAPTER XLIX.
AN OPENING INTO FATHER DEBREE'S HEART.

A NOTE was brought to Mr. Wellon by a child
whom he did not know. The handwriting of the
address was strange to him; and the seal, which
was heraldic, was strangely rude in its cutting.

“Who sent this?” he asked, as he opened it.

“Father Ignatius, sir,” answered the child.

The reading within was as follows, written with a
pencil:—

Mr. Wellon hastened to Mrs. Barrè.

“I've a note from Mr. Debree,” he said, and gave it
into her eager, trembling hand.

“Yes,” she said, glancing at the outside, “that's his!—
—I don't know the seal”—(she did not seem to have

glanced at it, in opening the note.) By one rush of the
blood she grew ghastly pale, as her eyes strained upon
the first words; then her lips quivered, and she seemed
nearly overcome. She read it through, for a slight sob,
or inarticulate exclamation, marked her having come to
the end; but she still held it with both hands, and pored
upon it.

Presently, recollecting herself, she said:—

“But you must have it.”

In folding it again, she again noticed the seal, but not
closely, and said, in an absent way,—

“No, I don't know this,—I don't know this;” and
gave it back to Mr. Wellon.

He looked at the seal more closely than she had done.
“The letters seem to spell `Debree,' but with an `I,'”
said he; “the true way, I suppose. I never saw it
written.”

“Yes, it's Norman; `DE BRIE;'—and Huguenot,”
said Mrs. Barrè, weeping, and speaking like one whose
mind was upon other things.

Perhaps to divert her attention, Mr. Wellon continued
his examination.

“This appears to be a heap of stones,” said he.

“A breach in a wall,” she said, rising, and taking from
her desk a letter which she put into his hand. The seal
bore a well-defined impression of a broken wall, across
whose breach a gauntletted hand held a spear. The
motto was “Non citra.”

“It came from Rouen, in the old wars,” she explained,
“and the family added the word Barrè,' for `Chemin
Barrè,' because one of them `barred' the way, single-handed;”
and she gave herself again to her thoughts.

“It was `De Brie-Barrè,' then?” he said; but added,

immediately, “Pardon me, my dear Mrs. Barrè, if I seem
to have been drawing out your confidence. It was entirely
without a thought.”

“It does not matter, now,” she answered; “Mr.
De Brie was my husband; but that name Ignatius is a
new one, when he became a Romish priest. His own
name is Walter.”

—Almost the first person whom he met in the road
was Miss Dare, and he gave her the note to read. She
wept, like Mrs. Barrè.

“So he is her husband!” she exclaimed. Then turning
the letter over, her eye, too, was caught by the seal,
which she examined more closely than the wife had done.

“This must be a fancy of his own,” she said; “a
mockery of his name; it reads `DÉBRIS,' and the
charge, (or whatever it is,) is a heap of stones.”