I Will Repay, Baroness Orczy [best ebook pdf reader android TXT] 📗

and also about⁠—about the citizeness, your guest.”

Déroulède looked at her closely, vaguely wondering at the strange attitude of the child. She was evidently labouring under some strong excitement, and in her thin, brown little hand she was clutching a piece of paper.

“Anne Mie! Child,” he said very gently, “you seem quite upset⁠—as if something terrible had happened. What is that paper you are holding, my dear?”

Anne Mie gazed down upon it. She was obviously making frantic efforts to maintain her self-possession.

Juliette at first sight of Anne Mie seemed literally to have been turned to stone. She sat upright, rigid as a statue, her eyes fixed upon the poor, crippled girl as if upon an inexorable judge, about to pronounce sentence upon her of life or death.

Instinct, that keen sense of coming danger which Nature sometimes gives to her elect, had told her that, within the next few seconds, her doom would be sealed; that Fate would descend upon her, holding the sword of Nemesis; and it was Anne Mie’s tiny, half-shrivelled hand which had placed that sword into the grasp of Fate.

“What is that paper? Will you let me see it, Anne Mie?” repeated Déroulède.

“Citizen Merlin gave it to me just now,” began Anne Mie more quietly; “he seems very wroth at finding nothing compromising against you, Paul. They were a long time in the kitchen, and now they have gone to search my room and Pétronelle’s; but Merlin⁠—oh! that awful man!⁠—he seemed like a beast infuriated with his disappointment.”

“Yes, yes.”

“I don’t know what he hoped to get out of me, for I told him that you never spoke to your mother or to me about your political business, and that I was not in the habit of listening at the keyholes.”

“Yes. And⁠—”

“Then he began to speak of⁠—of our guest⁠—but, of course, there again I could tell him nothing. He seemed to be puzzled as to who had denounced you. He spoke about an anonymous denunciation, which reached the Public Prosecutor early this morning. It was written on a scrap of paper, and thrown into the public box, it seems, and⁠—”

“It is indeed very strange,” said Déroulède, musing over this extraordinary occurrence, and still more over Anne Mie’s strange excitement in the telling of it. “I never knew I had a hidden enemy. I wonder if I shall ever find out⁠—”

“That is just what I said to Citizen Merlin,” rejoined Anne Mie.

“What?”

“That I wondered if you, or⁠—or any of us who love you, will ever find out who your hidden enemy might be.”

“It was a mistake to talk so fully with such a brute, little one.”

“I didn’t say much, and I thought it wisest to humour him, as he seemed to wish to talk on that subject.”

“Well? And what did he say?”

“He laughed, and asked me if I would very much like to know.”

“I hope you said No, Anne Mie?”

“Indeed, indeed, I said Yes,” she retorted with sudden energy, her eyes fixed now upon Juliette, who still sat rigid and silent, watching every movement of Anne Mie from the moment in which she began to tell her story.

“Would I not wish to know who is your enemy, Paul⁠—the creature who was base and treacherous enough to attempt to deliver you into the hands of those merciless villains? What wrong had you done to anyone?”

“Sh! Hush, Anne Mie! you are too excited,” he said, smiling now, in spite of himself, at the young girl’s vehemence over what he thought was but a trifle⁠—the discovery of his own enemy.

“I am sorry, Paul. How can I help being excited,” rejoined Anne Mie with quaint, pathetic gentleness, “when I speak of such base treachery, as that which Merlin has suggested?”

“Well? And what did he suggest?”

“He did more than suggest,” whispered Anne Mie almost inaudibly; “he gave me this paper⁠—the anonymous denunciation which reached the Public Prosecutor this morning⁠—he thought one of us might recognise the handwriting.”

Then she paused, some five steps away from Déroulède, holding out towards him the crumpled paper, which up to now she had clutched determinedly in her hand. Déroulède was about to take it from her, and just before he had turned to do so, his eyes lighted on Juliette.

She said nothing, she had merely risen instinctively, and had reached Anne Mie’s side in less than the fraction of a second.

It was all a flash, and there was dead silence in the room, but in that one-hundredth part of a second, Déroulède had read guilt in the face of Juliette.

It was nothing but instinct, a sudden, awful, unexplainable revelation. Her soul seemed suddenly to stand before him in all its misery and in all its sin.

It was as if the fire from heaven had descended in one terrific crash, burying beneath its devastating flames his ideals, his happiness, and his divinity. She was no longer there. His madonna had ceased to be.

There stood before him a beautiful woman, on whom he had lavished all the pent-up treasures of his love, whom he had succoured, sheltered, and protected, and who had repaid him thus.

She had forced an entry into his house; she had spied upon him, dogged him, lied to him. The moment was too sudden, too awful for him to make even a wild guess at her motives. His entire life, his whole past, the present, and the future, were all blotted out in this awful dispersal of his most cherished dream. He had forgotten everything else save her appalling treachery; how could he even remember that once, long ago, in fair fight, he had killed her brother?

She did not even try now to hide her guilt.

A look of appeal, touching in its trustfulness, went out to him, begging him to spare her further shame. Perhaps she felt that love, such as his, could not be killed in a flash.

His entire nature was full of pity, and to that pity she made a final appeal, lest she should be humiliated before Madame Déroulède and Anne Mie.

And he, still under the