Denounced: A Romance

by John Bloundelle-Burton

But to this the woman protested her dissent. She would know him again anywhere, at once or at a long interval, adding with a shudder that "for ever and as long as she should live, his features were stamped into her memory."

"What was he like, then?" asked the chief, "how clad?"

"Fairly tall," she replied, "though not so tall, I think, as that," and she glanced at poor Douglas's body lying in the centre of the crowd that surrounded it. The chief of the watch, and a doctor who had come from out a house near, had examined it at once on their arrival, and, alas! there was no life left in it. The gentle spirit had flown.

"Also," she went on, "the assassin was very dark, his eyes of a piercing nature, his face white as a corpse--as that," and again she glanced at the dead man; "but the whiteness might be from horror, mon Dieu! it was a terrible face, the face of a devil, terror-stricken; the face of a fiend. But no remorse, oh, no! only fear--it might be of himself."

"And his clothes?" asked the chief. "What of them?"

"Sombre, dark. All dark. Scarce any lace at sleeves or breast, neither aigrette nor cockade, nor galloon to his hat; no sword."

"Not a bully, then, nor filou? No appearance of a knight of the road? Hein?"

"No," the woman replied, "no." Then, reflectively, she said, "It was, I think, no murder for gain nor greed. Nay, could not have been. He stooped not, went not near the--the body after it fell. More like, I think, a deed of hate, of bitter, hot rage. Who knows? Perhaps a wife stolen, a daughter wronged. All is possible. For see, it," and again she glanced down, "was young, and--and, mon Dieu, il était beau!"

So they all said who gazed upon the handsome features now setting rigidly in the blaze of the moon. "Il était beau!"

"Well," said the chief, "we must not stay here. He must be removed. Meanwhile, I must to the officers of the guard; none must pass the gates at daybreak except under strict scrutiny. And the body must be searched to see if we can gather who and what he is. Alas! alas! The woman speaks well. He was handsome."