Lord Tony’s Wife quotes

“Tyrant! tyrant! tyrant!”

It was Pierre who spoke, his voice was hardly raised above a murmur, but there was such an intensity of passion expressed in his face, in the fingers of his hand which closed slowly and convulsively as if they were clutching the throat of a …

Silence. Loneliness. Desolation.

And the darkness of late afternoon in November, when the fog from the Bristol Channel has laid its pall upon moor and valley and hill: the last grey glimmer of a wintry sunset has faded in the west:

the spirit of adventure and reckless daring was awake—insistent and rampant—and subtle effluvia of enthusiasm and audacity emanated from his entire personality.

Sir Percy Blakeney had sunk his individuality in that of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

“I mean,” he said, returning his friend’s anxious look with one that was inspiring in its unshakable confidence, “I mean that on Monday last, the night before your wedding—when I urged you to obtain Yvonne de Kernogan’s consent to an immediate marriage—I had followed Martin-Roget …

“I am mad, Percy,” he said with a self-deprecating shrug of the shoulders, “gone crazy with grief, I suppose, or I shouldn’t talk of asking your help, of risking your life in my cause.”

“Tony, if you talk that rubbish, I shall be forced to punch your head,” retorted Blakeney with his light laugh. “Why man,” he added gaily, “can’t you see that I am aching to have at my old friend Chauvelin again?”

And indeed the zest of adventure, the zest to fight, never dormant, was glowing with compelling vigour now in those lazy eyes of his which were resting with such kindliness upon his stricken friend. “Go home, Tony!”

“Pshaw, my child,” he said quietly, “many a time since the world began have women registered such solemn and sacred vows, only to break them when force of circumstance and their own good sense made them ashamed of their own folly.”

“How little you know me, father,” was all that she said in reply.

Indeed, Yvonne de Kernogan—Yvonne Dewhurst as she was now in sight of God and men—had far too much innate dignity and self-respect to continue this discussion, seeing that in any case she was physically the weaker, and that she was absolutely helpless and defenceless in …

After this episode Yvonne gave up the struggle.

No one but God could help her, if He chose to perform a miracle.

The rest of the journey was accomplished in silence. Yvonne gazed, unseeing, through the carriage window as the barouche rattled on the cobblestones of the streets of Bristol.

This miserable, sordid, wretched journey to an unknown land could not be the epilogue to the exquisite romance which had suddenly changed the dreary monotony of her life into one long, glowing dream of joy and of happiness!

This could not be the end!

And gazing into the immensity of the far horizon she thought and thought and racked her memory for every word, every look which she had had from her dear milor.

le duc de Kernogan, and therefore I tell you, that both he and his daughter shall not die like martyrs but like malefactors too—shamed—dishonoured—loathed and execrated even by their own kindred! Take note of that, M. le duc de Kernogan!

You have sown shame, shame shall you reap!

and the name of which you are so proud will be dragged in the mire until it has become a byword in the land for all that is despicable and base.”

Nantes is in the grip of the tiger.

Representative Carrier—with powers as of a proconsul—has been sent down to stamp out the lingering remnants of the counterrevolution. La Vendée is temporarily subdued; the army of the royalists driven back across the Loire;

He had regained something of his former complacency.

The man who buys⁠—be it goods, consciences or services⁠—is always for the moment master of the man who sells.

Carrier, despite his dictatorial ways, felt this disadvantage, no doubt, for his tone was more bland, his manner less curt.

Chauvelin, on the other hand, was one of those who wore fine linen and buckled shoes and whose hands were delicately washed and perfumed whilst they signed decrees which sent hundreds of women and children to a violent and cruel death.

The one trod in the paths of Danton: the other followed in the footsteps of Robespierre.

Together the two men mounted the outside staircase which leads up past the lodge of the concierge and through the clerk’s office to the interior of the stronghold.

Chauvelin had as usual followed his colleague in silence, but his keen eyes had not failed to note the presence of the village lads of whom Martin-Roget had spoken.

There are no eyes so watchful as those of hate, nor is there aught so incorruptible.

Every one of these men here had an old wrong to avenge, an old score to settle with those ci-devant Kernogans who had once been their masters and who were so completely in their power now.

But Chauvelin commanded and he felt impelled to obey. He gave one long, last look on Yvonne—a look that was as full of triumph as of mockery—he looked round the four dank walls, the unglazed window, the broken pitcher, the mouldy bread.

Revenge was of a truth the sweetest emotion of the human heart.

Pierre Adet—son of the miller who had been hanged by orders of the Duc de Kernogan for a crime which he had never committed—would not at this moment have changed places with Fortune’s Benjamin.

Silent and sullen she was shuffling about in the room, among her pots and pans, but she kept an eye upon her brother’s movements and an ear on what he said. Men were apt to lose grit where a pretty wench was concerned.

It takes a woman’s rancour and a woman’s determination to carry a scheme of vengeance against another to a successful end.

“I knew that she would still be obstinate,” he said. “If I forced her into a marriage, which I have the right to do, she might take her own life and make me look a fool. So I don’t want to do that.

This! she, Yvonne, cowering beside her dead father, with no one to stand between her and any insult, any outrage which might be put upon her, with nothing now but a few laths between her and that yelling, screeching mob outside.

Oh! the loneliness! the utter, utter loneliness!

She kissed the inert hand, the pale forehead: with gentle, reverent fingers she tried to smooth out those lines of horror and of fear which gave such a pitiful expression to the face.

the next moment there was a crash overhead of broken window-glass and of furniture kicked from one end of the room to the other, immediately followed by the sound of heavy footsteps running helter-skelter down the stairs.

Yvonne, half-crazed with terror, faint and sick, fell unconscious over the body of her father.

Inside the taproom commandant Fleury was still at work.

“

The Scarlet Pimpernel, at your service, citizen commandant,

” came loudly and with a merry laugh from the pseudo Friche.