“Even for that I am not unprepared; no, no. Be assured of one thing, he may decline, but will not defy us.”
“I know where your confidence is, Count,” said she; “but that rapier of yours has got you into more trouble than it has ever worked you good.”
“Parbleu, I have no reason to be ungrateful to it!” replied he, laughing; “and, perhaps, with all its rust, it may do some service yet.”
“At all events,” said she, “bethink you well of the consequences before you admit him to any confidence. Remember that when once he is intrusted with our plan, he is the master of our secret, and we are without a remedy.—Pshaw!” said she, scornfully, as if in reply to some gesture on his part; “that remedy may be applied once too often.”
My heart beat fast and full as I heard these words, whose significance there could not be a doubt of, as the same curiosity to discover some clew to the scheme by which I was to be snared was superior to all my fears, and I half resolved, at whatever risk it might cost, to suffer myself to be drawn into the intrigue. They now moved on, and though I could hear their voices stop in low discourse, I could not detect the words they uttered. It was evident that some proposition was to be made to me, the rejection of which on my part might involve me in the greatest peril. With what straining ingenuity did I endeavor to divine what this might be! In all likelihood, it referred to some political intrigue, for which my character as a “secret agent” might seem to adapt me. Yet some of the expressions they had let drop by no means favored this interpretation. What could my “mongrel nationality,” as the Count styled it, avail me in such a conjuncture?
As these thoughts were chasing each other through my mind, I was threading my way through the salons, and at length, to my sincere satisfaction, found myself in the open street. By the time I reached the hotel I had made up my mind to start at once on my mission, without waiting for the Count's arrival. I hastily scratched a few lines of commonplace acknowledgment for his attentions to me, and half-significantly adding that I hoped to express them personally when we met again, wished him a “good journey,” and then set out on my own.
During the rest of that night, and, indeed, for a great part of the following day, I did not feel satisfied with myself for what I had done. It was, indeed, an inglorious mode of escaping from a difficulty, and argued more of fear than resolution. As time wore on, however, I reasoned myself into the notion that against secret treachery, courage and firmness avail little, and if a well-planned scheme was about to environ me, I had done the wisest thing in the emergency.
I suppose the experience of others will bear me out in saying that the actual positive ills of life are more easily endured than the vague and shadowy dangers which seem to hover over the future, and darken the road before us. The calamities that lie in ambush for us are ever present to our thoughts. The hour of our misfortune may be to-day, to-morrow, or the day after. Every chance incident of untoward aspect may herald the bad tidings, and we live in unceasing expectancy of evil. Do what I would, a dreary and despondent gloom now settled on me; I felt as if I were predestined to some grievous misfortune, against which I was utterly powerless, and the hour of which I could neither hasten nor retard. How bitterly I reproached myself for making an acquaintance with the Count! For years I had lived a life of solitary seclusion, avoiding even the commonest forms of acquaintanceship. The shame my calling inspired me with made me reluctant to know those who, perhaps, when they discovered me to be the spy, would have regarded me with aversion! Not that in reality the odious epithet could, with any fairness, be applied to me. My “secret agency” had not risen beyond the mere functions of a messenger; and though at times I was intrusted with verbal communications, they were delivered in confidence of my trustworthiness, and not imparted in any reliance on my skill to improve them; but I cannot stoop to apologize for a condition to which bitter necessity reduced me, and which I clung to as offering the last remnant of hope to find out those who, of all the world, were the only ones who bore me affection.
I have already said that this hope was now fast dying out; repeated disappointment had all but extinguished it; and it was only when the name “Reichenau” had again stirred its almost cold embers that I determined on this last chance ere I abandoned my career forever.