The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel eBook

Baroness Emma Orczy
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 286 pages of information about The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel eBook

Baroness Emma Orczy
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 286 pages of information about The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

The voice, the appeal, the look of love, was more than the poor, simple girl could resist.  Milor was so handsome, so kind, so good.

It had all been so strange:  these English aristocrats coming here, she knew not whence, and who seemed fugitives even though they had plenty of money to spend.  Two days ago they had sought shelter like malefactors escaped from justice—­in this same tumbledown, derelict house where she, Yvonne, with her blind father and two little brothers, crept in of nights, or when the weather was too rough for them all to stand and beg in the streets of Paris.

There were five of them altogether, and one seemed to be the chief.  He was very tall, and had deep blue eyes, and a merry voice that went echoing along the worm-eaten old rafters.  But milor—­the one whose arms were encircling her even now—­was the handsomest among them all.  He had sought Yvonne out on the very first night when she had crawled shivering to that corner of the room where she usually slept.

The English aristocrats had frightened her at first, and she was for flying from the derelict house with her family and seeking shelter elsewhere; but he who appeared to be the chief had quickly reassured her.  He seemed so kind and good, and talked so gently to blind papa, and made such merry jests with Francois and Clovis that she herself could scarce refrain from laughing through her tears.

But later on in the night, milor—­her milor, as she soon got to call him—­came and talked so beautifully that she, poor girl, felt as if no music could ever sound quite so sweetly in her ear.

That was two days ago, and since then milor had often talked to her in the lonely, abandoned house, and Yvonne had felt as if she dwelt in Heaven.  She still took blind papa and the boys out to beg in the streets, but in the morning she prepared some hot coffee for the English aristocrats, and in the evening she cooked them some broth.  Oh! they gave her money lavishly; but she quite understood that they were in hiding, though what they had to fear, being English, she could not understand.

And now milor—­her milor—­was telling her that these Englishmen, her friends, were spies and traitors, and that it was her duty to tell citizen Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety all about them and their mysterious doings.  And poor Yvonne was greatly puzzled and deeply distressed, because, of course, whatever milor said, that was the truth; and yet her conscience cried out within her poor little bosom, and the thought of betraying those kind Englishmen was horrible to her.

“Yvonne,” whispered milor in that endearing voice of his, which was like the loveliest music in her ear, “my little Yvonne, you do trust me, do you not?”

“With all my heart, milor,” she murmured fervently.

“Then, would you believe it of me that I would betray a real friend?”

“I believe, milor, that whatever you do is right and good.”

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Project Gutenberg
The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.