United States or Pitcairn Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
My fur coat, which was still round me, was twisted, so that the inside breast-pocket was behind me, and I fancied that the hard object was something that I had placed in this receptacle. I let my thumb and finger travel up and down it. It had the form of a tiny knife, with a heavy, rounded handle. And suddenly I knew what it was. It was the knife with which Louis d'Epernay had been killed!
"I was uneasy, for it did not look to be like a love-match, and I knew that M. d'Epernay had the reputation of a profligate in Quebec, where he was hand in glove with Philippe Lacroix, one of M. Leroux's aids. But a priest has no option when an expression of matrimonial consent is made to him in the presence of two witnesses. So I married them. "My duties took me to Quebec.
I met Mme. d'Epernay by accident, and I escorted her toward the château, and followed her after you kidnapped her, to protect her from you." He grunted and glanced at me with an inscrutable expression upon his hard features. "You are in love with her?" he asked. "Put it that way if you choose," I answered. He scowled at me ferociously, and then he began studying my face.
Sir Henry Guest, the great surgeon who worked among the poor without recompense, loved Gainsborough's 'Lady Wilton. The portrait hangs above his tomb in St. Clement's Hundreds. D'Epernay loved Mlle. Jeanne Vacaresco, who died before he was born. And I I love in my own fashion."
"I believe that Leroux has discovered coal on his property, and by threatening him with arrest has gained a complete ascendency over the weak-minded old man. However, the fact remains that his daughter was married by me to M. d'Epernay some ten or twelve days ago at the château.
"If there had not been the blood of a dead man between us," she moaned. "If you had not killed him!" Her words were a revelation to me, for I learned that she had mercifully been spared the full remembrance of what had happened in the Tenth Street apartment. She thought that it was I who had killed Louis d'Epernay.
And at that moment, in spite of all, I felt something that was not far from affection toward the man. "Père Antoine will marry you?" I asked. "Yes," he replied. "And her father?" "Is safe in the château, playing with his wheel and amassing a fortune in his dreams." "One word more," I continued. "Mme. d'Epernay is very ill. She was struck by one of those bullets that you fired through the door.
He winked at me and thrust his tongue into his cheek. I was too sick at heart to pay attention to his buffoonery. I sat down at the table and, taking up a pen which lay there, wrote a check for eight thousand dollars, making it out to Jacqueline d'Epernay. This I handed to her. "Adieu, madame," I said. "Adieu, monsieur," she answered almost inaudibly, her head bent low.
This man, d'Epernay, who is said to be dead now, wanted to sell me the biggest gold mine in the world for fifty thousand dollars, and from what I know of Leroux I am ready to believe that he would try to hog it if it really exists. So, as I wanted to see how our lumber development at St. Boniface was getting along, I thought I'd come up here and investigate." "But how about Leroux?"
And so I married Louis under threat of death to my father. "Oh, yes, monsieur, the plan was simple and well devised. And I knew nothing of it. But Louis d'Epernay blurted it all out to me upon our wedding night. I think the shame of knowing that I had been sold to him unhinged my mind, for I ran out into the snows.
Word Of The Day