Servants of Sin. John Bloundelle-Burton
he went slowly into another room, feeling that his feet dragged under him, that they were heavy as lead.
"By night," he murmured, "it will be all over Paris-at Versailles and St. Germain-the Palais Royal. The Regent will laugh and make merry over it with La Phalaris-countless women whom I have cast off will be gloating over it, laughing at the downfall, the humiliation of Desparre-the fool, Desparre, who had boasted of the trick he was to play on his kinsfolk. Dieu! to be fooled by this beggar's brat. Yet. Yet. Yet-well! let Orleans laugh-still-he shall help me to be avenged. He shall. He must. Or-I will tell my tale, too. Sirac and I know as much as he about the deaths of the Duc and Duchesse de Bourgogne and the Duc de Bretagne-about the Spanish snuff. Ha! he must avenge me on these two-he shall."
Vandecque came back now, saying that the company was departing, but that some of the ladies, especially the Dowager Duchess, were very anxious to see him and express their sympathy. Would he receive them?
"Sympathy, faugh! Let them express their sympathy to the Devil, their master. Now, Vandecque, listen to me. There is but one way of re-establishing myself in the eyes of Paris. By retaliation, punishment-swift, hard, unceasing. You understand?"
Vandecque nodded.
"Good. If you did not understand I should have to assist your memory with reminders of other things-which would have been no more remembered had all gone well-and of several little matters in your past known to me. However, you need no reminders such as those, I think."
Again Vandecque showed by a nod that such was the case.
"Good. Therefore, you will assist me to rehabilitate myself. So. So. Very well. We must begin at once. Because, Vandecque, I am not well, this has been a great shock to me-and-and, Vandecque, I had a-perhaps it was an apoplectic seizure six months ago, when-when-I was falsely accused of-but no matter. I am afraid I may have another ere long. I feel symptoms. My feet are heavy, my speech is uncertain. I must not leave the thing undone."
"What," asked the other, "will you do?"
"What!" Desparre paused a moment, and again the twitching came to his lips; then, when it was over, he went on. "What! Vandecque," speaking rapidly this time, "do you love your niece at all?"
"Passably," and he shrugged his shoulders, "she was beloved of my dead wife, and she was useful. Also, I hoped great things from her marriage."
"Those hopes are vanished, Vandecque. So, too, for the matter of that, is your niece. Therefore, it will not grieve you never to see her again?"
"I shall never see her again. You forget she has a husband."
"No, Vandecque. No! I do not forget. It is that which I am remembering."
"What do you mean, Monsieur?"
"Later on you will know. Meanwhile," and he put a finger out and touched him, "do you love this Englishman, who has spoilt your niece's chances?"
"Love him!" exclaimed Vandecque. "Love him! Ah! do I love him!" while, as he spoke, he looked straight into Desparre's eyes.
CHAPTER VII
MAN AND WIFE
"This," said Walter Clarges, as he thrust open the door, "has been my home for the last four years. You will find it comfortable enough, I hope. Let me assist you to remove your cloak and hood."
It was a large room into which he led his newly-married wife, situated on the ground floor of an old street, the Rue de la Dauphine, in the Quartier St. Germain. A room in which a wood fire burnt on this cold wintry day, and which was furnished sufficiently well-far more so, indeed, than were the habitations of most of the English refugees in Paris after the "'15." The furniture, if old and solid, was good of its kind; there were a number of tables and chairs and a huge lounge, an excellent Segoda carpet on the floor, and a good deal of that silver placed about, against the sale of which, for gambling purposes, a strangely stringent law had just been passed in France. On the walls there were some pictures-one of an English country house, another of a horse, a third of a lady.
"That is my mother," Clarges said. "My mother! Shall I ever see her again? God knows!"
She, following him with her eyes as he moved about the room, could think only of one thing; of the nobility of the sacrifice he had made for her that morning; the sacrifice of his life. He had married her because it was the only way to save her from Desparre, the only legal bar he could place between her and her uncle's desire to sell her to the best bidder who had appeared. The law, passed by the late King, which accorded to fathers and guardians the total right to dispose of the hands of their female children and wards, was terrible in its power; there was no withstanding it. Nothing but a previous marriage could save those children and wards, and, even if that marriage had taken place clandestinely, the law punished it heavily. But, punish severely as it might, it could not undo the marriage. That stood against all.
"Oh! Monsieur Clarges," Laure exclaimed, as she sat by the side of his great fire, the cloak removed from her shoulders, her hood off, and her beautiful hair, unspoilt by any wig, looped up behind her head. "Oh! Monsieur Clarges, now it is finished I reproach myself bitterly with the wrong I have performed against you. I-I-"
"I beseech you," he said, coming back to where she sat, and standing in front of her. "I beseech you not to do so. What has been done has been my own thought; my own suggestion. And you will remember that, when I asked you to be my wife a year ago and you refused, I told you that, if you would accept me, I would never force my love on you further than in desiring that I might serve you. The chance has come for me to do so-I thank God it has come! – I have had my opportunity. Whatever else may happen, I have been enabled to save you from the terrible fate you dreaded."
He stood as he spoke against the great mantel-shelf, gazing down at her, and she, while looking up at him in turn, recognised how great was the nobility of this man. She saw, too, and she wondered now why it struck her for the first time-struck her as it had never done before-that he was one who should have but little difficulty in gaining a woman's love if he desired it. She had always known that he was possessed of good looks, was well-made and graceful, and had clear-cut, handsome features. Now-perhaps because of what he had done for her that day, because he had wrecked his existence to save hers-hers! the existence of an abandoned child, a nameless woman-and had placed a barrier between him and the love of some honest woman who would make a home and happiness for him, she thought he seemed more than good-looking; indeed, he almost seemed in her eyes superb in his dignity and manliness. And she asked herself, "Why, why could she not have given him the love he craved for? Why not?"
"There was," she said aloud and speaking slowly, while, with her hands before her on her knees, she twined her fingers together. "There was no just reason why you should have made this sacrifice for me. I-I refused to give the love you craved, therefore you were absolved from all consideration of me. I had no claim on you-no part nor share in your life. Oh! Monsieur," she broke off, "why tempt me with so noble an opportunity of escape from my impending fate; why tempt me to avail myself of so great a surrender by you of all that could make life dear? Especially since I have told you! – thank God, I told you! – that I am a nameless woman. That I have no past."
"Hush," he said. "Hush, I beseech you. I loved you a year ago, and I made my offer-even proffered my terms. You would not accept those terms then; yet, because the offer was made, I have kept to it. Do you think the story of your unacknowledged birth and parentage could cause me to alter? Nay! – if I have saved you, I am content."
Still she looked up at him standing there; still, as she gazed at him who had become her husband, she felt almost appalled at the magnanimity of his nature. How far above her was this man whose love she had refused; how great the nobleness of his sacrifice! And-perhaps, because she was a woman-even as he spoke to her she noticed that he never mentioned the love which had prompted him to the sacrifice as being in the present, but always as having been in the past. "I loved you last year," he had said once; not, "I love you."
"Now," he went on, seating himself in a chair opposite to her on the other side of the great fireplace. "Now, let us talk of the future. Of what we must do. This is what I purpose."
She raised her eyes from the fire again and looked at him, wondering if he was about to suggest that their life should