The Gamester by Raphael Sabatini

Author:Raphael Sabatini
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Stratus

It bore no signature, and none was needed. It filled her with dismay. Once the Count were removed, and assuming that his wife did not accompany him, there would be no one and nothing to stand between the Countess and Catherine’s husband. The circumstance, conveyed in the note, that Horn’s exile was of John Law’s contriving, was only too credible and desperately alarming.

So, repellent though the notion might be of again visiting that horrible house in the Place du Roule, Catherine braced herself to it.

She was not to suspect that the rage of the gentleman she found awaiting her was purely histrionic. Nothing could have appeared more natural than that he should be distraught to find himself banished at the instances of a cunning rival who desired a clear field. She was not to suspect his secret certainty that the only betrayal of which his wife was guilty was the betrayal to Monsieur Lass of the Parliament’s intrigue against him. True, he could discover no explanation of why she should have warned her fellow countryman, other than sheer malice towards himself; but with this he was satisfied, convinced, in spite of Catherine’s details, that the Countess could have had no previous acquaintance with Law.

“Ah, madame,” was his plaint, “this is monstrous, terrible. We are the victims of a wicked pair who enjoy the advantage of being well served by authority. As surely as I owe my banishment to your husband, just as surely has he been prompted to procure it by my wife. Not content with having ruined me utterly, with having robbed me of my last liard, that wicked man is now to rob me of my honour.”

He stood over her, a tragic figure, whilst she once more occupied the faded settle, and reflected genuinely his spurious grief. From a velvet bag she drew a bundle of banknotes. “This banishment,” she said, “from what you’ve told me is made worse by your financial distress. This may relieve it at least a little. It is only three thousand louis, all that I can bring you now without being detected.”

“Madame!” There was horror in his voice. It was an outcry of protest or refusal.

“It belongs to you. It is a little part of all that of which you have been robbed, so you need not scruple to take it. Do not offend me by refusing.”

“Madame!” he cried again, and it was almost a sob. He sank to the settle beside her, impulsively he caught her wrists and bore to his lips the hand that held the notes. “The money… What is the money to me? But the gesture… My God, Catherine, that is everything. It brings me to tears that you should have this thought for me.”

“Take it. Take it,” she insisted.

“In my need I am so mean as to allow myself to be persuaded. But I take it only as a loan…”

“No loan. It belongs to you, and you shall have more.”

The promise was easy of fulfilment out of her husband’s unstinting liberality.

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