The Gates of Doom by Rafael Sabatini

Author:Rafael Sabatini
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pronoun

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CHAPTER 13. IN THE ROSE-GARDEN

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ALARMED, CONFUSED, THE LOVERS SPRANG apart; yet not so far apart that the Captain’s arm continued to encircle—protectingly now—the waist of Damaris.

There followed a spell of silence during which the two men measured each other with their eyes, like swordsmen about to engage. And there was something more in the Captain’s glance; there was satisfaction to see before him the man who was become his quarry. No need now to go afield in search of him. With a smouldering eye, with something that was almost a smile on his lips did Gaynor ponder now his enemy.

But it was Damaris, standing tense and white, who was the first to break the silence.

“By what right, sir, do you thus insolently thrust yourself in here?” she challenged the intruder.

“Do you, madam, question my right?” quoth he, eyebrows raised. It was Captain Gaynor who supplied the answer to her question.

“By the right of his nature, Damaris. He can no more help being a spy than the fox can help its smell.”

His lordship’s eyes swung back to the Captain’s face, and betrayed by their startled look how shrewdly this blow had caught him. But he made a swift recovery, throwing back his handsome black head in arrogance.

“What shall that mean, sir?”

“Mean, you base Judas!” The Captains passion was overmastering him at the sight of this man whose falseness had wrought such fearful havoc, had ruined for a season his beloved master’s every hope. Thus that fierce burst of rage escaped him. But he controlled himself almost at once.

“Let me present to you, Damaris,” said he, in a cold, sneering voice, “the most infamous spy in England, who in the discharge of that office has thrust himself here upon us. You may have conceived that in my Lord Pauncefort you beheld a nobleman, a gentleman, a man of honour. So have others thought to their undoing. Instead, you behold there a broken gamester who for a handful of gold has betrayed the men who trusted him and counted him their friend, has sold the Cause in which he himself believed, has bartered his honour and brought everlasting shame upon the name he bears.”

“Be silent!” thundered Pauncefort, advancing a step and checking there, his countenance writhing. “It is false, I say!”

“You perjured hound! False, is it? Ay, the deed was false and foul as hell, in which it shall be expiated.”

“Was it he betrayed you?” quoth Damaris, her voice most singularly calm and quiet.

“Ay was it. Look on him, Damaris.” He flung out an accusing arm. “Look on him, for you may never again see such another—a man who was born a gentleman and is reduced to infamy, a man who has pawned his soul to keep his body in luxury.”

Pauncefort was livid, stricken by the unexpectedness of this attack, for he had been very far from dreaming that his treachery was detected.

“And now, sir,” said Damaris, “now that you have received what was here your due, perhaps you will depart again?”

Her contempt struck him more keenly than the Captain’s bitter denunciation.

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