Bardelys the Magnificent

She had sunk into a chair. Her hands were folded in a listless manner in her lap, and her eyes were lowered, her cheeks pale. But the swift heave of her bosom told me that my words were not without effect. "Do you know nothing of the bargain that I made with Chatellerault?" she asked in a voice that held, I thought, some trace of misery.

"Chatellerault was a cheat!" I cried. "No man of honour in France would have accounted himself under obligation to pay that wager. I paid it, not because I thought the payment due, but that by its payment I might offer you a culminating proof of my sincerity."

"Be that as it may," said she, "I passed him my word to--to marry him, if he set you at liberty."

"The promise does not hold, for when you made it I was at liberty already. Besides, Chatellerault is dead by now--or very near it."

"Dead?" she echoed, looking up.

"Yes, dead. We fought--" The ghost of a smile, of sudden, of scornful understanding, passed like a ray of light across her face. "Pardieu!" I cried, "you do me a wrong there. It was not by my hands that he fell. It was not by me that the duel was instigated."

And with that I gave her the whole details of the affair, including the information that Chatellerault had been no party to my release, and that for his attempted judicial murder of me the King would have dealt very hardly with him had he not saved the King the trouble by throwing himself upon his sword: There was a silence when I had done. Roxalanne sat on, and seemed to ponder. To let all that I had said sink in and advocate my cause, as to me was very clear it must, I turned aside and moved to one of the windows.

"Why did you not tell me before?" she asked suddenly. "Why--oh, why--did you not confess to me the whole infamous affair as soon as you came to love me, as you say you did?"

"As I say I did?" I repeated after her. "Do you doubt it? Can you doubt it in the face of what I have done?"

"Oh, I don't know what to believe!" she cried, a sob in her voice. "You have deceived me so far, so often. Why did you not tell me that night on the river? Or later, when I pressed you in this very house? Or again, the other night in the prison of Toulouse?"

"You ask me why. Can you not answer the question for yourself? Can you not conceive the fear that was in me that you should shrink away from me in loathing? The fear that if you cared a little, I might for all time stifle such affection as you bore me? The fear that I must ruin your trust in me? Oh, mademoiselle, can you not see how my only hope lay in first owning defeat to Chatellerault, in first paying the wager?"