Part 17 (1/2)
”Like what, ood-hun What have I done that you should treat me like a child, unworthy even of attention?”
Blakeney had turned back and was now facing hier racious air, and beneath their heavy lids his eyes looked down not unkindly on his friend
”Would you have preferred it, Armand,” he said quietly, ”if I had said the word that your ears have heard even though my lips have not uttered it?”
”I don't understand,” n would you have hadcaleryou, Marguerite's brother, as a liar and a cheat?”
”Blakeney!” retorted the other, as with fla step toward his friend; ”had any man but you dared to speak such words to me--”
”I pray to God, Arht to speak theht, my friend Do I not hold your oath? Are you not prepared to break it?”
”I'll not break my oath to you I'll serve and help you in every way you can coive erous--the ladly”
”I have given you an over-difficult and dangerous task”
”Bah! To leave Paris in order to engage horses, while you and the others do all the work That is neither difficult nor dangerous”
”It will be difficult for you, Armand, because your head is not sufficiently cool to foresee serious eventualities and to prepare against theerous, because you are a man in love, and a man in love is apt to run his head--and that of his friends--blindly into a noose”
”Who told you that I was in love?”
”You yourself, ood fellow Had you not toldvery quietly and deliberately and never raising his voice, ”I would even now be standing over you, dog-whip in hand, to thrash you as a defaulting coward and a perjurerBah!”
he added with a return to his habitual bonhomie, ”I would no doubt even have lost my temper with you Which would have been purposeless and excessively bad for to Arloith anger, caught those of Blakeney fixed with lazy good-nature upon his Sonity which pervaded the whole personality of the man checked Armand's hotheaded words on his lips
”I cannot leave Paris to-morrow,” he reiterated ain?”
”Because she saved er”
”She is in no danger,” said Blakeney simply, ”since she saved the life offrom Armand St Just's very soul Despite the tu in his heart, he was conscious again of the netic pohich bound so many to this h they were--had sent a thrill through Armand's veins He felt hith of an unbendable will; nothing re sense of shame and of impotence
He sank into a chair and rested his elbows on the table, burying his face in his hands Blakeney went up to him and placed a kindly hand upon his shoulder
”The difficult task, Arently
”Percy, cannot you release me? She saved my life I have not thanked her yet”