Lord Tony's Wife by Emmuska Orczy Read Free Book Online

those miles and come to this desolate spot for the sole purpose of speaking with one another. During the course of that half-hour the woman brought in a dish of mutton stew, a chunk of bread, a piece of cheese and a jug of spiced ale, and placed them on the table: all of these good things the stranger consumed with an obviously keen appetite. When he had eaten and drunk his fill, he rose from the table, drew a bench into the ingle-nook and sat down so that his profile only was visible to his friend ‘the Captain.’
    ‘Now, citizen Chauvelin,’ he said with an attempt at ease and familiarity not unmixed with condescension, ‘I am ready for your news.’
    II
    Chauvelin had winced perceptibly both at the condescension and the familiarity. It was such a very little while ago that men had trembled at a look, a word from him: his silence had been wont to strike terror in quaking hearts. It was such a very little while ago that he had been president of the Committee of Public Safety, all powerful, the right hand of citizen Robespierre, the master sleuth-hound who could track an unfortunate ‘suspect’ down to his most hidden lair, before whose keen, pale eyes the innermost secrets of a soul stood revealed, who guessed at treason ere it was wholly born, who scented treachery ere it was formulated. A year ago he had with a word sent scores of men, women and children to the guillotine—he had with a sign brought the whole machinery of the ruthless Committee to work against innocent of guilty alike on mere suspicion, or to gratify his own hatred against all those whom he considered to be the enemies of that bloody revolution which he had helped to make. Now his presence, his silence, had not even the power to ruffle the self-assurance of an upstart.
    But in the hard school both of success and of failure through which he had passed during the last decade, there was one lesson which Armand once Marquis de Chauvelin had learned to the last letter, and that was the lesson of self-control. He had winced at the other’s familiarity, but neither by word nor gesture did he betray what he felt.
    ‘I can tell you,’ he merely said quite curtly, ‘all I have to say in far less time than it has taken you to eat and drink, citizen Adet…’
    But suddenly, at sound of that name, the other had put a warning hand on Chauvelin’s arm, even as he cast a rapid, anxious look all around the narrow room.
    ‘Hush, man!’ he murmured hurriedly, ‘you know quite well that that name must never be pronounced here in England. I am Martin-Roget now,’ he added, as he shook off his momentary fright with equal suddenness, and once more resumed his tone of easy condescension, ‘and try not to forget it.’
    Chauvelin without any haste quietly freed his arm from the other’s grasp. His pale face was quite expressionless, only the thin lips were drawn tightly over the teeth now, and a curious hissing sound escaped faintly from them as he said:
    ‘I’ll try and remember, citizen, that here in England you are an aristo, the same as all these confounded English whom may the devil sweep into a bottomless sea.’
    Martin-Roget gave a short, complacent laugh.
    ‘Ah,’ he said lightly, ‘no wonder you hate them, citizen Chauvelin. You too were an aristo here in England once—not so very long ago, I am thinking–special envoy to His Majesty King George, what?—until failure to bring one of these satanι Britishers to book made you… er…well, made you what you are now.’
    He drew up his tall, broad figure as he spoke and squared his massive shoulders as he looked down with a fatuous smile and no small measure of scorn on the hunched-up little figure beside him. It had seemed to him that something in the nature of a threat had crept into Chauvelin’s attitude, and he, still flushed with his own importance, his immeasurable belief in himself, at once chose to measure his strength against this man who was the personification of failure and