The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy (book recommendations TXT) 📗

the numerous lapels and collars he himself had set in fashion, but he had thrown it well back, burying his hands as was his wont, in the deep pockets of his satin breeches: the gorgeous white costume he had worn at Lord Grenville’s ball, with its jabot of priceless lace, looked strangely ghostly against the dark background of the house.

He apparently did not notice her, for, after a few moments pause, he presently turned back towards the house, and walked straight up to the terrace.

“Sir Percy!”

He already had one foot on the lowest of the terrace steps, but at her voice he started, and paused, then looked searchingly into the shadows whence she had called to him.

She came forward quickly into the moonlight, and, as soon as he saw her, he said, with that air of consummate gallantry he always wore when speaking to her⁠—

“At your service, Madame!”

But his foot was still on the step, and in his whole attitude there was a remote suggestion, distinctly visible to her, that he wished to go, and had no desire for a midnight interview.

“The air is deliciously cool,” she said, “the moonlight peaceful and poetic, and the garden inviting. Will you not stay in it awhile; the hour is not yet late, or is my company so distasteful to you, that you are in a hurry to rid yourself of it?”

“Nay, Madame,” he rejoined placidly, “but ’tis on the other foot the shoe happens to be, and I’ll warrant you’ll find the midnight air more poetic without my company: no doubt the sooner I remove the obstruction the better your ladyship will like it.”

He turned once more to go.

“I protest you mistake me, Sir Percy,” she said hurriedly, and drawing a little closer to him; “the estrangement, which alas! has arisen between us, was none of my making, remember.”

“Begad! you must pardon me there, Madame!” he protested coldly, “my memory was always of the shortest.”

He looked her straight in the eyes, with that lazy nonchalance which had become second nature to him. She returned his gaze for a moment, then her eyes softened, as she came up quite close to him, to the foot of the terrace steps.

“Of the shortest, Sir Percy! Faith! how it must have altered! Was it three years ago or four that you saw me for one hour in Paris, on your way to the East? When you came back two years later you had not forgotten me.”

She looked divinely pretty as she stood there in the moonlight, with the fur-cloak sliding off her beautiful shoulders, the gold embroidery on her dress shimmering around her, her childlike blue eyes turned up fully at him.

He stood for a moment, rigid and still, but for the clenching of his hand against the stone balustrade of the terrace.

“You desired my presence, Madame,” he said frigidly. “I take it that it was not with the view to indulging in tender reminiscences.”

His voice certainly was cold and uncompromising: his attitude before her, stiff and unbending. Womanly decorum would have suggested Marguerite should return coldness for coldness, and should sweep past him without another word, only with a curt nod of her head: but womanly instinct suggested that she should remain⁠—that keen instinct, which makes a beautiful woman conscious of her powers long to bring to her knees the one man who pays her no homage. She stretched out her hand to him.

“Nay, Sir Percy, why not? the present is not so glorious but that I should not wish to dwell a little in the past.”

He bent his tall figure, and taking hold of the extreme tip of the fingers which she still held out to him, he kissed them ceremoniously.

“I’faith, Madame,” he said, “then you will pardon me, if my dull wits cannot accompany you there.”

Once again he attempted to go, once more her voice, sweet, childlike, almost tender, called him back.

“Sir Percy.”

“Your servant, Madame.”

“Is it possible that love can die?” she said with sudden, unreasoning vehemence. “Methought that the passion which you once felt for me would outlast the span of human life. Is there nothing left of that love, Percy⁠ ⁠… which might help you⁠ ⁠… to bridge over that sad estrangement?”

His massive figure seemed, while she spoke thus to him, to stiffen still more, the strong mouth hardened, a look of relentless obstinacy crept into the habitually lazy blue eyes.

“With what object, I pray you, Madame?” he asked coldly.

“I do not understand you.”

“Yet ’tis simple enough,” he said with sudden bitterness, which seemed literally to surge through his words, though he was making visible efforts to suppress it, “I humbly put the question to you, for my slow wits are unable to grasp the cause of this, your ladyship’s sudden new mood. Is it that you have the taste to renew the devilish sport which you played so successfully last year? Do you wish to see me once more a lovesick suppliant at your feet, so that you might again have the pleasure of kicking me aside, like a troublesome lapdog?”

She had succeeded in rousing him for the moment: and again she looked straight at him, for it was thus she remembered him a year ago.

“Percy! I entreat you!” she whispered, “can we not bury the past?”

“Pardon me, Madame, but I understood you to say that your desire was to dwell in it.”

“Nay! I spoke not of that past, Percy!” she said, while a tone of tenderness crept into her voice. “Rather did I speak of a time when you loved me still! and I⁠ ⁠… oh! I was vain and frivolous; your wealth and position allured me: I married you, hoping in my heart that your great love for me would beget in me a love for you⁠ ⁠… but, alas!⁠ ⁠…”

The moon had sunk low down behind a bank of clouds. In the east a soft grey light was beginning to chase away the heavy mantle of the night. He could only see her graceful outline now, the small queenly head, with its