United States or Hong Kong ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Because he may find out I'm gone, and come after us, you know." Nothing seemed more likely; I was bound to admit that. "Get in, Mr. Aycon," continued the duchess. And then she suddenly began to talk English. "I told him I shouldn't stay in the house if Mlle. Delhasse came. He didn't believe me; well, he'll see now. I couldn't stay, could I? Why don't you get in?" Half dazed, I got in.
The significant reticence of this message was meant to inform the duke that Marie Delhasse was not so solitary in her flight but that she could find a cavalier to do her errands for her, and one who would not acquiesce in the retention of the diamonds. I imagined, with a great deal of pleasure, what the duke's feelings would be in face of the communication.
Dismissing the matter, I did as Bontet advised, and walked upstairs to my room; and as luck would have it, I met Mme. Delhasse plump on the landing, she being on her way to the sitting room. I bowed low. Madame gave me a look of hatred and passed by me. As she displayed no surprise, it was evident that the duke had carried or sent word of my arrival.
But he will come over to see her." "Her" was, of course, Marie Delhasse. The duchess assigned to her the sinister distinction of the simple pronoun. "Surely he will take means to get you to go back?" I exclaimed. "If he could have caught me before I got here, he would have been glad. Now he will wait; for if he came here and claimed me, what he proposed to do would become known."
Her voice rose, for all her efforts to keep it low, and she mingled foul words of the duchess and of me with scornful curses on the virtue of her daughter. I could say nothing; I stood there wondering that such creatures lived, amazed that Marie Delhasse must call such an one her mother.
But again I stood with it in my hand struck still with the thought that I could not now return it to Marie Delhasse, that she had vanished leaving it on my hands, and that, in all likelihood, in three or four hours' time the Duke of Saint-Maclou would be scouring the country and setting every spring in motion in the effort to find the truant lady, and what I thought he would be at least anxious about the truant necklace.
For his wife and his name he would fight a duel: for the sake of Marie Delhasse he would do murder on an invited stranger in his house. I struggled to my feet, his grip on my throat; and I stretched out my hands and caught him under the shoulders in the armpits, and flung him back against the table, and thence he reeled on to a large cabinet that was by the wall, and Stood leaning against it.
Not till I knew the Judge, having been introduced to him by his son, did he ask me further of the matter; and then, sitting on the lawn of his country-house, I told him the whole story, as it has been set down in this narrative, saving only sundry matters which had passed between the duchess and myself on the one hand, and between Marie Delhasse and myself on the other.
The impulse that had made the thing done was exhausted in the doing of it. Retreat became my sole object; and, drawing back, I pulled the door after me. But I had given Fortune a handle very literally; for the handle of the door grated loud as I turned it. Despairing of escape, I stood still. Marie Delhasse looked up with a start.
And prove it I did that morning in the burial ground of the convent, to my own complete satisfaction, and thereby overcame the last doubts which afflicted Marie Delhasse. And if, in spite of that most exhaustive and satisfactory proof, the thing proved remained not much more true than the thing disproved why, it is not my fault.
Word Of The Day