The Sword of Gideon

by John Bloundelle-Burton

His dress, in which at one time he had thought of making some alteration, he had, however, left as it was, since it was neither too handsome nor too conspicuous for a secretary of legation on his travels with a French lady of rank who, if necessity should call for such a declaration, would state that they were family connections.

He had arrived at this spot and taken up the position he now occupied some quarter of an hour ago, and during that time, while casting searching glances to right and left of him to see if there were as yet any signs of the approach of Madame de Valorme's carriage, his mind had been much occupied with all that had transpired since Mynheer Van Ryk had escorted the two ladies to the Weiss Haus.

Yet strange as had been one, or, at least, two, occurrences during the past twenty-four hours, another matter, the recollection of one other incident, dominated his mind more than aught else--the recollection that the last words Sylvia uttered had been almost an avowal of her regard--he dared not yet tell himself that it was an avowal of her love--for him.

"Her voice, her tone, her anxiety to depart from Liége," he had said to himself a hundred times since he parted from the girl, "scarce leaves me room to doubt her sentiments for me, while throwing open the door of a vast, a supreme hope. Ah, if it is so! If, when once we are free of this place, I may dare to speak, and, in speaking, win the reply I fain would receive, what happiness will be mine! With Sylvia for my love, my promised wife; with her safe in England, what may I not undertake in the future? Once more a soldier, as I hope to be, may I not follow where duty summons me, knowing that, if it pleases Providence to spare my life, it will be to find Sylvia awaiting me and ready to fulfil her promise to be my wife when I return."

As he had thought thus during the past hours so he thought again while, statue-like, he sat his steed in the deepest shadows of the palace cloisters and waited to hear the tread of the Comtesse's horses approaching, or to see the carriage emerging from one of the narrow streets that led into the great open space around the palace.

Still, however, he had those other things to occupy his mind--strange things that, had it not been for the overmastering thoughts of the woman he had learnt to love--the woman who, he dared to hope, had either come or was coming to love him--would have never left his mind. Things, occurrences, that now cast a strangely different light on all that had happened during the storm of the first night in the Weiss Haus, and that had raised oft-recurring doubts as to whether he had accurately understood all that had taken place in the darkness of that night.

When Sylvia and the Comtesse de Valorme had departed with Mynheer Van Ryk, Bevill--partly attracted by the beauty of the evening and partly because it was still early, and perhaps, also, because he knew full well that, after Sylvia's last words to him, there would be little likelihood of his sleeping at present--determined to remain outside the mansion for some time before attempting to obtain any rest.

Naturally--as, maybe, needs no telling--his steps were unconsciously directed back to the arbour in which their late conversation had taken place, and, as he approached the spot, the calm tranquillity of the night, the entire absence of the lightest breeze, forced itself upon his attention. Even, however, as this took place he recalled how Van Ryk had said that the wind was rising and rustling the bushes and long grasses; and, while doing so, Bevill wondered why the merchant should have given utterance to such a remark; for, as he thought upon the matter, he knew that no breath of wind had disturbed the air, that not the slightest breeze had blown that would have stirred a leaf.

His faculties aroused by all the necessities for caution which had formed part of his existence since he left England on the undertaking he was now about--faculties that had long since been trained and sharpened in his earlier campaigns--he stood gazing at the bushes and tall, wavy, Eastern grasses which surrounded the arbour, as though in them he might, dark as it was now, discover some natural cause that would have furnished Van Ryck with the supposition that the wind was rising.

Seeing nothing, however, that could suggest any such cause, he walked round those bushes and grasses to the back of the arbour and endeavoured to discover if the reason was to be found there.