Author: Baroness Emmuska Orczy
Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5090] [This
file was last updated on April 9, 2004]
Edition: 11
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** Start of this project gutenberg
EBOOK I will repay ***
This Etext was prepared by Walter Debeuf, Project
Gutenberg volunteer.
I will repay.
By Baroness Orczy.
Paris: 1783.
“Coward! Coward! Coward!”
The words rang out, clear, strident, passionate, in
a crescendo of agonised humiliation.
The boy, quivering with rage, had sprung to his feet,
and, losing his balance, he fell forward clutching
at the table, whilst with a convulsive movement of
the lids, he tried in vain to suppress the tears of
shame which were blinding him.
“Coward!” He tried to shout the insult
so that all might hear, but his parched throat refused
him service, his trembling hand sought the scattered
cards upon the table, he collected them together, quickly,
nervously, fingering them with feverish energy, then
he hurled them at the man opposite, whilst with a
final effort he still contrived to mutter: “Coward!”
The older men tried to interpose, but the young ones
only laughed, quite prepared for the adventure which
must inevitably ensue, the only possible ending to
a quarrel such as this.
Conciliation or arbitration was out of the question.
Deroulede should have known better than to speak
disrespectfully of Adele de Montcheri, when the little
Vicomte de Marny’s infatuation for the notorious
beauty had been the talk of Paris and Versailles these
many months past.
Adele was very lovely and a veritable tower of greed
and egotism. The Marnys were rich and the little
Vicomte very young, and just now the brightly-plumaged
hawk was busy plucking the latest pigeon, newly arrived
from its ancestral cote.
The boy was still in the initial stage of his infatuation.
To him Adele was a paragon of all the virtues, and
he would have done battle on her behalf against the
entire aristocracy of France, in a vain endeavour
to justify his own exalted opinion of one of the most
dissolute women of the epoch. He was a first-rate
swordsman too, and his friends had already learned
that it was best to avoid all allusions to Adele’s
beauty and weaknesses.
But Deroulede was a noted blunderer. He was
little versed in the manners and tones of that high
society in which, somehow, he still seemed and intruder.
But for his great wealth, no doubt, he never would
have been admitted within the intimate circle of aristocratic
France. His ancestry was somewhat doubtful and
his coat-of-arms unadorned with quarterings.
