s reading it
Chilina went upstairs to his sister's room.

"My father, dear sir, has not been well," Miss Nevil wrote, "and he is
so indolent, besides, that I am obliged to act as his secretary. You
remember that, instead of admiring the landscape with you and me the
other day, he got his feet wet on the sea-shore--and in your delightful
island, that is quite enough to give one a fever! I can see the face you
are making! No doubt you are feeling for your dagger. But I will hope
you have none now. Well, my father had a little fever, and I had a great
fright. The prefect, whom I persist in thinking very pleasant, sent us
a doctor, also a very pleasant man, who got us over our trouble in two
days. There has been no return of the attack, and my father would like
to begin to shoot again. But I have forbidden that. How did you find
matters in your mountain home? Is your North Tower still in its old
place? Are there any ghosts about it? I ask all these questions because
my father remembers you have promised him buck and boar and moufflon--is
that the right name for those strange creatures? We intend to crave your
hospitality on our way to Bastia, where we are to embark, and I trust
the della Rebbia Castle, which you declare is so old and tumble-down,
will not fall in upon our heads! Though the prefect is so pleasant that
subjects of conversation are never lacking to us--I flatter myself, by
the way, that I have turned his head--we have been talking about your
worshipful self. The legal people at Bastia have sent him certain
confessions, made by a rascal they have under lock and key, which are
calculated to destroy your last remaining suspicions. The enmity which
sometimes alarmed me for you must therefore end at once. You have no
idea what a pleasure this has been to me! When you started hence with
the fair _voceratrice_, with your gun in hand, and your brow lowering,
you struck me as being more Corsican than ever--too Corsican indeed!
_Basta!_ I write you this long letter because I am dull. The prefect,
alas! is going away. We will send you a message when we start for your
mountains, and I shall take the liberty of writing to Signorina Colomba
to ask her to give me a _bruccio, ma solenne_! Meanwhile, give her
my love. I use her dagger a great deal to cut the leaves of a novel I
brought with me. But the doughty steel revolts against such usage, and
tears my book for me, after a most pitiful fashion. Farewell, sir! My
father sen