The Laughing Cavalier Baroness Orczy (bill gates books recommendations txt) 📖

that someone was awake at this moment, in this house besides himself⁠—someone who breathed and trembled on the other side of the door.

Without a moment’s hesitation he slipped on his clothes as quickly as he could, then he pulled the curtains across in front of the alcove and paused for one second longer in order to listen.

He had certainly not been mistaken. Through the stillness of the house he heard the soughing of the wind, the snoring of the watchmen, and that faint, palpitating sound outside in the passage⁠—that sound which was as the breathing of some living, frightened thing.

Then he walked as noiselessly as he could up to the door, and with a sudden simultaneous turn of key and handle he opened it suddenly.

It opened outwards, and the passage beyond was pitch dark, but there in front of him now, white as a ghost, white as the garment which she wore, white as the marble statue of the Madonna which he had seen in the cathedral at Prague, stood the jongejuffrouw.

The candle which she carried flickered in the draught, and thus flickering it lit up her large blue eyes which she kept fixed upon him with an expression half defiant yet wholly terrified.

Frankly he thought at first that this was an apparition, a vivid embodiment of the fevered fancies which had been haunting him. No wonder therefore that he made no movement toward her, or expressed the slightest astonishment at seeing her there, all alone, in the middle of the night, not five paces away from him.

Thus they stood looking at one another for some time in absolute silence; she obviously very frightened, hesitating betwixt audacity and immediate flight, and he puzzled and with a vague sense of unreality upon him, a sense as of a dream which yet had in it the pulsating vividness of life.

She was the first to break this silence which was beginning to be oppressive. Gilda Beresteyn was not a timid woman nor was hers a character which ever vacillated once her mind was made up. The step which she had taken this night⁠—daring and unconventional as it was⁠—had been well thought out: deliberately and seriously she had weighed every danger, every risk which she ran, even those which in her pure-minded innocence she was not able fully to appreciate. Now though she was scared momentarily, she had no thought of turning back.

The old stiff-necked haughtiness of her race did not desert her for a moment, even though she was obviously at a disadvantage in this instance, and had come here as a suppliant.

“I wished to speak with you, sir,” she said, and her voice had scarce a tremor in it, “my woman was too timorous to come down and summon you to my presence, as I had ordered her to do; so I was forced to come myself.”

Though she looked very helpless, very childlike in her innocence, she had contrived to speak to him like a princess addressing a menial, holding her tiny head very high and making visible efforts to still the quivering of her lips.

There was something so quaint in this proud attitude of hers under the present circumstances, that despite its pathos Diogenes’ keen sense of humour was not proof against it, and that accustomed merry smile of his crept slowly over every line of his face.

“I am ever at your service, mejuffrouw,” he said as gravely as he could, “your majordomo, your valet⁠ ⁠… I always await your commands.”

“Then I pray you take this candle,” she said coldly, “and stand aside that I may enter. What I have to say cannot be told in this passage.”

He took the candle from her, since she held it out to him, and then stepped aside just as she had commanded, keeping the door wide open for her to pass through into the room. She was holding herself very erect, and with perfect self-possession she now selected a chair whereon to sit. She wore the same white gown which she had on when first he laid hands on her in the streets of Haarlem, and the fur cloak wherein she had wrapped herself had partially slid from her shoulders.

Having sat down, close to the table, with one white arm resting upon it, she beckoned peremptorily to him to close the door and to put the candle down; all of which he did quite mechanically, for the feeling had come back to him that the white figure before him was only a vision⁠—or mayhap a dream⁠—from which, however, he hoped not to awaken too soon.

“At your command, mejuffrouw,” was all that he said, and he remained standing quite close to the door, with half the width of the room between himself and her.

But to himself he murmured under his breath:

“St. Bavon and the Holy Virgin, do ye both stand by me now!”

“I do not know, sir,” she began after awhile, “if my coming here at this hour doth greatly surprise you, but in truth the matter which brings me is so grave that I cannot give a thought to your feelings or to mine own.”

“And mine, mejuffrouw, are of such little consequence,” he said good-humouredly seeing that she appeared to wait for a reply, “that it were a pity you should waste precious time in considering them.”

“Nor have I come to talk of feelings, sir. My purpose is of deadly earnestness. I have come to propose a bargain for your acceptance.”

“A bargain?”

“Yes. A bargain,” she reiterated. “One I hope and think that you will find it worthwhile to accept.”

“Then may I crave the honour of hearing the nature of that bargain, mejuffrouw?” he asked pleasantly.

She did not give him an immediate reply but remained quite still and silent for a minute or even two, looking with wide-open inquiring eyes on the tall figure of the man who had⁠—to her mind⁠—done her such an infinite wrong. She noted and acknowledged quite dispassionately the air of splendour which