Part 11 (1/2)

”There isn't any difference between them that I know of,” she said, and then added archly; ”but you will feel better at last, when all is over and the sting of defeat tingles through you, if you are conscious of having used every sensible precaution.”

He looked straight into her eyes, trying to catch what was in her mind, but there was a bewildering glamour playing across those gray, opal-tinted wells of mystery, from which he could draw only a mischievous smile-glint, direct, daring, irresistible.

”Well,” he said, taking one of the foils, ”what do you really mean? Is it a challenge without room for honorable retreat?”

”The time for parley is past,” she replied, ”follow me to the battle-ground.”

She led the way to a pleasant little court in the rear of the cabin's yard, a s.p.a.ce between two wings and a vine-covered trellis, beyond which lay a well kept vineyard and vegetable garden. Here she turned about and faced him, poising her foil with a fine grace.

”Are you ready?” she inquired.

He tried again to force a way into the depths of her eyes with his; but he might as well have attacked the sun; so he stood in a confusion of not very well defined feelings, undecided, hesitating, half expecting that there would be some laughable turn to end the affair.

”Are you afraid, Monsieur Beverley?” she demanded after a short waiting in silence.

He laughed now and whipped the air with his foil.

”You certainly are not in earnest?” he said interrogatively. ”Do you really mean that you want to fence with me?”

”If you think because I'm only a girl you can easily beat me, try it,”

she tauntingly replied making a level thrust toward his breast.

Quick as a flash he parried, and then a merry clinking and twinkling of steel blades kept time to their swift movements. Instantly, by the sure sense which is half sight, half feeling--the sense that guides the expert fencer's hand and wrist--Beverley knew that he had probably more than his match, and in ten seconds his attack was met by a time thrust in opposition which touched him sharply.

Alice sprang far back, lowered her point and laughed.

”Je vous salue, Monsieur Beverley!” she cried, with childlike show of delight. ”Did you feel the b.u.t.ton?”

”Yes, I felt it,” he said with frank acknowledgment in his voice, ”it was cleverly done. Now give me a chance to redeem myself.”

He began more carefully and found that she, too, was on her best mettle; but it was a short bout, as before. Alice seemed to give him an easy opening and he accepted it with a thrust; then something happened that he did not understand. The point of his foil was somehow caught under his opponent's hilt-guard while her blade seemed to twist around his; at the same time there was a wring and a jerk, the like of which he had never before felt, and he was disarmed, his wrist and fingers aching with the wrench they had received.

Of course the thing was not new; he had been disarmed before; but her trick of doing it was quite a mystery to him, altogether different from any that he had ever seen.

”Vous me pardonnerez, Monsieur,” she mockingly exclaimed, picking up his weapon and offering the hilt to him. ”Here is your sword!”

”Keep it,” he said, folding his arms and trying to look unconcerned, ”you have captured it fairly. I am at your mercy; be kind to me.”

Madame Roussillon and Jean, the hunchback, hearing the racket of the foils had come out to see and were standing agape.

”You ought to be ashamed, Alice,” said the dame in scolding approval of what she had done; ”girls do not fence with gentlemen.”

”This girl does,” said Alice.

”And with extreme disaster to this gentleman,” said Beverley, laughing in a tone of discomfiture and resignation.

”Ah, Mo'sieu', there's nothing but disaster where she goes,” complained Madame Roussillon, ”she is a destroyer of everything. Only yesterday she dropped my pink bowl and broke it, the only one I had.”

”And just to think,” said Beverley, ”what would have been the condition of my heart had we been using rapiers instead of leather-b.u.t.toned foils! She would have spitted it through the very center.”