Free The Bronze Eagle by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

shoulders with his arms,
then he seized her two hands and covered them with kisses. "You are all
that I want in this world. After all, we can live in poverty . . . we
have been brought up in poverty, you and I . . . and even then it is
only a question of a few years . . . months, perhaps . . . the King must
give us back what that abominable Revolution took from us—from us who
remained loyal to him and because we were loyal. My father owned rich
lands in Burgundy . . . the King must give those back to me . . . he
must . . . he shall . . . he will . . . if only you will be patient,
Crystal . . . if only you will wait. . . ."
    The fiery blood of his race had rushed into Maurice de St. Genis' head.
He was talking volubly and at random, [Pg 66] but he believed for the moment
everything that he said. Tears of passion and of fervour came to his
eyes and he buried his head in the folds of Crystal's white gown and
heavy sobs shook his bent shoulders. She, moved by that motherly
tenderness which is seldom absent from a good woman's love, stroked with
soothing fingers the matted hair from his hot forehead. For a while she
remained silent while the paroxysm of his passionate revolt spent itself
in tears, then she said quite softly:
    "I think, Maurice, that in your heart you do us all an injustice—to me,
to father, to yourself, even to the King. The King cannot give you that
which is not his; your property—like ours—was confiscated by that
awful revolutionary government because your father and mine followed
their king into exile. The rich lands were sold for the benefit of the
nation: the nation presumably has spent the money, but the people who
bought the lands in good faith cannot be dispossessed by our King
without creating bitter ill-feeling against himself, as you well know,
and once more endangering his throne. Those are the facts, Maurice,
against which no hot-blooded argument, no passionate outbursts can
prevail. The King gave my father back this dear old castle, because it
happened to have proved unsaleable, and was still on the nation's hands.
Our rich lands—like yours—can never be restored to us: that hard fact
has been driven into poor father's head for the past ten months, and now
it has gone home at last. These grey walls, this neglected garden, a few
sticks of broken furniture, a handful of money from an over-generous
king's treasury is all that Fate has rescued for him from out the ashes
of the past. My father is every whit as penniless as you are yourself,
Maurice, as penniless as ever he was in England, when he gave French and
drawing lessons to a lot of young ragamuffins in a middle-class school.
But Victor de Marmont is rich, and his money—once I am his wife—will
pur [Pg 67] chase back all the estates which have been in our family for
hundreds of years. For my father's sake, for the sake of the name which
I bear, I must give my hand to Victor de Marmont, and pray to God that
some semblance of peace, the sense of duty accomplished, will compensate
me for the happiness to which I shall bid good-bye to-day."
    "And you are willing to be sold to young de Marmont for the price of a
few acres of land!" retorted Maurice de St. Genis hotly. "Oh! it's
monstrous, Crystal, monstrous! All the more monstrous as you seem quite
unconscious of the iniquity of such a bargain."
    "Women of our caste, Maurice," she said in her turn with a touch of
bitterness, "have often before now been sacrificed for the honour of
their name. Men have been accustomed to look to them for help when their
own means of gilding their escutcheons have failed."
    "And you are willing, Crystal, to be sold like this?" he insisted.
    "My father wishes me to marry Victor de Marmont," she replied with calm
dignity, "and after all that he has suffered for the honour and dignity
of our name, I should deem myself craven and treacherous if I refused to
obey him in this."
    Maurice de St. Genis once more rose to his feet. All his