El Dorado by Baroness Orczy (if you liked this book .txt) 📕

from time to time, but he does not care for my company. My colleague, citizen Héron, on the other hand, calls on him four times in every twenty-four hours; he does so a few moments before the changing of the guard, and stays chatting with Sir Percy until after the guard is changed, when he inspects the men and satisfies himself that no traitor has crept in among them. All the men are personally known to him, you see. These hours are at five in the morning and again at eleven, and then again at five and eleven in the evening. My friend Héron, as you see, is zealous and assiduous, and, strangely enough, Sir Percy does not seem to view his visit with any displeasure. Now at any other hour of the day, Lady Blakeney, I pray you command me and I will arrange that citizen Héron grant you a second interview with the prisoner.”

Marguerite had only listened to Chauvelin’s lengthy speech with half an ear; her thoughts still dwelt on the past half-hour with its bitter joy and its agonising pain; and fighting through her thoughts of Percy there was the recollection of Armand which so disquieted her. But though she had only vaguely listened to what Chauvelin was saying, she caught the drift of it.

Madly she longed to accept his suggestion. The very thought of seeing Percy on the morrow was solace to her aching heart; it could feed on hope tonight instead of on its own bitter pain. But even during this brief moment of hesitancy, and while her whole being cried out for this joy that her enemy was holding out to her, even then in the gloom ahead of her she seemed to see a vision of a pale face raised above a crowd of swaying heads, and of the eyes of the dreamer searching for her own, whilst the last sublime cry of perfect self-devotion once more echoed in her ear:

“Remember!”

The promise which she had given him, that would she fulfil. The burden which he had laid on her shoulders she would try to bear as heroically as he was bearing his own. Aye, even at the cost of the supreme sorrow of never resting again in the haven of his arms.

But in spite of sorrow, in spite of anguish so terrible that she could not imagine Death itself to have a more cruel sting, she wished above all to safeguard that final, attenuated thread of hope which was wound round the packet that lay hidden on her breast.

She wanted, above all, not to arouse Chauvelin’s suspicions by markedly refusing to visit the prisoner again⁠—suspicions that might lead to her being searched once more and the precious packet filched from her. Therefore she said to him earnestly now:

“I thank you, citizen, for your solicitude on my behalf, but you will understand, I think, that my visit to the prisoner has been almost more than I could bear. I cannot tell you at this moment whether tomorrow I should be in a fit state to repeat it.”

“As you please,” he replied urbanely. “But I pray you to remember one thing, and that is⁠—”

He paused a moment while his restless eyes wandered rapidly over her face, trying, as it were, to get at the soul of this woman, at her innermost thoughts, which he felt were hidden from him.

“Yes, citizen,” she said quietly; “what is it that I am to remember?”

“That it rests with you, Lady Blakeney, to put an end to the present situation.”

“How?”

“Surely you can persuade Sir Percy’s friends not to leave their chief in durance vile. They themselves could put an end to his troubles tomorrow.”

“By giving up the Dauphin to you, you mean?” she retorted coldly.

“Precisely.”

“And you hoped⁠—you still hope that by placing before me the picture of your own fiendish cruelty against my husband you will induce me to act the part of a traitor towards him and a coward before his followers?”

“Oh!” he said deprecatingly, “the cruelty now is no longer mine. Sir Percy’s release is in your hands, Lady Blakeney⁠—in that of his followers. I should only be too willing to end the present intolerable situation. You and your friends are applying the last turn of the thumbscrew, not I⁠—”

She smothered the cry of horror that had risen to her lips. The man’s cold-blooded sophistry was threatening to make a breach in her armour of self-control.

She would no longer trust herself to speak, but made a quick movement towards the door.

He shrugged his shoulders as if the matter were now entirely out of his control. Then he opened the door for her to pass out, and as her skirts brushed against him he bowed with studied deference, murmuring a cordial “Good night!”

“And remember, Lady Blakeney,” he added politely, “that should you at any time desire to communicate with me at my rooms, 19, Rue Dupuy, I hold myself entirely at your service.”

Then as her tall, graceful figure disappeared in the outside gloom he passed his thin hand over his mouth as if to wipe away the last lingering signs of triumphant irony:

“The second visit will work wonders, I think, my fine lady,” he murmured under his breath.

XXXI An Interlude

It was close on midnight now, and still they sat opposite one another, he the friend and she the wife, talking over that brief half-hour that had meant an eternity to her.

Marguerite had tried to tell Sir Andrew everything; bitter as it was to put into actual words the pathos and misery which she had witnessed, yet she would hide nothing from the devoted comrade whom she knew Percy would trust absolutely. To him she repeated every word that Percy had uttered, described every inflection of his voice, those enigmatical phrases which she had not understood, and together they cheated one another into the belief that hope lingered somewhere hidden in those words.

“I am not going to despair, Lady Blakeney,” said Sir Andrew firmly; “and, moreover,