Lord Tony’s Wife, Baroness Orczy [bill gates best books TXT] 📗

The men entered the narrow room and Chauvelin carefully closed the door behind him. He at once withdrew into a remote comer of the room and stood there quite still, wrapped in his mantle, a small, silent, mysterious figure on which Yvonne fixed dark, inquiring eyes.

Martin-Roget, restless and excited, paced up and down the small space like a wild animal in a cage. From time to time exclamations of impatience escaped him and he struck one fist repeatedly against his open palm. Yvonne followed his movements with a quiet, uninterested glance, but Chauvelin paid no heed whatever to him.

He was watching Yvonne ceaselessly, and closely.

Three days’ incarceration in this windswept attic, the lack of decent food and of warmth, the want of sleep and the horror of her present position all following upon the soul-agony which she had endured when she was forcibly torn away from her dear milor, had left their mark on Yvonne Dewhurst’s fresh young face. The look of gravity which had always sat so quaintly on her piquant features had now changed to one of deep and abiding sorrow; her large dark eyes were circled and sunk; they had in them the unnatural glow of fever, as well as the settled look of horror and of pathetic resignation. Her soft brown hair had lost its lustre; her cheeks were drawn and absolutely colourless.

Martin-Roget paused in his restless walk. For a moment he stood silent and absorbed, contemplating by the flickering light of the candle all the havoc which his brutality had wrought upon Yvonne’s dainty face.

But Yvonne after a while ceased to look at him⁠—she appeared to be unconscious of the gaze of these two men, each of whom was at this moment only thinking of the evil which he meant to inflict upon her⁠—each of whom only thought of her as a helpless bird whom he had at last ensnared and whom he could crush to death as soon as he felt so inclined.

She kept her lips tightly closed and her head averted. She was gazing across at the unglazed window into the obscurity beyond, marvelling in what direction lay the sea and the shores of England.

Martin-Roget crossed his arms over his broad chest and clutched his elbows with his hands with an obvious effort to keep control over his movements and his temper in check. The quiet, almost indifferent attitude of the girl was exasperating to his overstrung nerves.

“Look here, my girl,” he said at last, roughly and peremptorily, “I had an interview with the proconsul this afternoon. He chides me for my leniency toward you. Three days he thinks is far too long to keep traitors eating the bread of honest citizens and taking up valuable space in our city. Yesterday I made a proposal to you. Have you thought on it?”

Yvonne made no reply. She was still gazing out into nothingness and just at that moment she was very far away from the narrow, squalid room and the company of these two inhuman brutes. She was thinking of her dear milor and of that lovely home at Combwich wherein she had spent three such unforgettable days. She was remembering how beautiful had been the colour of the bare twigs in the chestnut coppice when the wintry sun danced through and in between them and drew fantastic patterns of living gold upon the carpet of dead leaves; and she remembered too how exquisite were the tints of russet and blue on the distant hills, and how quaintly the thrushes had called: “Kiss me quick!” She saw again those trembling leaves of a delicious faintly crimson hue which still hung upon the branches of the scarlet oak, and the early flowering heath which clothed the moors with a gorgeous mantle of rosy amethyst.

Martin-Roget’s harsh voice brought her abruptly back to the hideous reality of the moment.

“Your obstinacy will avail you nothing,” he said, speaking quietly, even though a note of intense irritation was distinctly perceptible in his voice. “The proconsul has given me a further delay wherein to deal leniently with you and with your father if I am so minded. You know what I have proposed to you: Life with me as my wife⁠—in which case your father will be free to return to England or to go to the devil as he pleases⁠—or the death of a malefactor for you both in the company of all the thieves and evildoers who are mouldering in the prisons of Nantes at this moment. Another delay wherein to choose between an honourable life and a shameful death. The proconsul waits. But tonight he must have his answer.”

Then Yvonne turned her head slowly and looked calmly on her enemy.

“The tyrant who murders innocent men, women and children,” she said, “can have his answer now. I choose death which is inevitable in preference to a life of shame.”

“You seem,” he retorted, “to have lost sight of the fact that the law gives me the right to take by force that which you so obstinately refuse.”

“Have I not said,” she replied, “that death is my choice? Life with you would be a life of shame.”

“I can get a priest to marry us without your consent: and your religion forbids you to take your own life,” he said with a sneer.

To this she made no reply, but he knew that he had his answer. Smothering a curse, he resumed after a while:

“So you prefer to drag your father to death with you? Yet he has begged you to consider your decision and to listen to reason. He has given his consent to our marriage.”

“Let me see my father,” she retorted firmly, “and hear him say that with his own lips.

“Ah!” she added quickly, for at her words Martin-Roget had turned his head away and shrugged his shoulders with well-assumed indifference, “you cannot and dare not let me see him. For three days now you have kept us apart and