Rev had known all along. Rev didn't need to break the wax seal, read the contract and find out. He could conceivably have wished to make sure; Rev loved Honotassa, it was like a part of his breath and body; Rev had stressed the need for money. Rev would never have tried to give her poison!

She thrust the envelope back in the bag; there was no point in locking it up in the armoire now, it was like locking the barn after the horse was stolen. And in all likelihood, by now, there was more than one person in the house who knew the terms of her marriage contract. There was no point either in telling herself again what a fool she'd been.

She went downstairs and received another curious shock, for when Glendora flapped into the dining room in her homemade moccasins, Sarah asked her when she had brought coffee to her room and Glendora said she hadn't. ``Too much work this morning, Miss Sarah -- everybody gone like that'' --

Sarah swallowed past another kind of constriction in her throat. ``Well, then who brought it?''

``Miss Maude. She come to the kitchen and say she take it up to you.'' Glendora put down a dish of lukewarm rice. ``Not much breakfast this morning. I don't know what we're going to do, Miss Sarah.''

``We've got to eat,'' Sarah said, curtly, because a chill crawled over her again. Maude?

Glendora flapped away. The rice wasn't dosed with opium, indeed it had no taste at all, not a grain of salt. She ate what she could and went out along the covered passageway, with the rain dripping from the vines. In the kitchen Glendora was despairingly picking chickens. ``Get a basket,'' Sarah told her. ``We'll go to the storehouse.''