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Robert Carruthers of Grez and Bye spent with the beautiful Madam Patricia Whitworth in one of the deep windows that looked from the private study of His Excellency of the State of Harpeth, over into the great hills that surround the city.
For just one single long second that grande dame, Roberta, the Marquise of Grez and Bye, cowered in fear upon her warm bed in the house of her Uncle, the General Robert, at the thought of going out into the night at the command of a man, and then that devoted daredevil, Mr. Robert Carruthers, answered into the telephone to the Gouverneur Faulkner: "Immediately I come to you."
And of all noble sweeps of roadway, none is nobler, on a windy dusk, than the highroad to Nemours between its lines of talking poplar. But even Grez is changed. The old inn, long shored and trussed and buttressed, fell at length under the mere weight of years, and the place as it was is but a fading image in the memory of former guests.
So we draw about the kitchen fire and play a round game of cards for ha'pence, or go to the billiard-room, for a match at corks and by one consent a messenger is sent over for the wagonette Grez shall be left to- morrow. To-morrow dawns so fair that two of the party agree to walk back for exercise, and let their kidnap-sacks follow by the trap.
"You are as beautiful as you are wicked, Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye, but you go to your death in a manner befitting a grande dame of your ancient house of France, whose daughters once showed the rabble how to approach a guillotine, costumed in magnificence. Descend for that cold knife to your heart!"
"It is always my pleasure to be with you, my Gouverneur, and I do like that you command me," I said to him in answer to that gentleness that had something of a sad longing in it for that custard pie of Madam Taylor, I suppose, of which he had probably heard famous mention, but which I would have believed to have been a longing for Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye, if I had heard it so spoken, with an English or Russian or French accent, to me in a robe of tulle or sheer linen.
At any rate we may well ask ourselves if anywhere else he would have found the kind of understanding and devotion which she gave him from the day of their first meeting at Grez until the day of his death in far-away Samoa; if anywhere else there was a woman of equal attainments who would willingly, nay gladly, throw aside all of the pleasures and comforts of civilization to live among savages, and the still rougher whites of the South Pacific, in order that her husband might have just a little more oxygen for his failing lungs, a little more chance for a respite and an extension of his shortening years?
"Is that you, Robert?" came the voice of my beloved Gouverneur, which made the heart of that anguished Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye, beat into a sudden great happiness though also alarm. "Yes, Your Excellency." "Can you dress very quietly, get your car and come up here to the Mansion without letting anybody know of it?" "I will do what you command." "I need you, boy, and I need you quick."
"Here's to your first duel with a woman in which you use a man's weapons, Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye, and see that you score for him and for France!" I said to myself as we rose from the table and with the other men I bowed the ladies from the room. "At midnight," I whispered while I bent for a second to kiss the hand of the beautiful Madam Whitworth as she left the room.
I, Roberta, Marquise de Grez and Bye, have obtained glimpses into a far country and this is what I bring on returning, not as a spy, but, shall I say, laden with spices and forbidden fruit? And for me it has been a very fine dash into the wilds of a land of strangeness, and I do not know that I have yet found myself completely returned unto my estate of a woman.
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