To-day again fortune
comes to my rescue. Again you see me slipping from your grasp, and
you are in despair. Then, in the eleventh hour, Mademoiselle de
Lavedan comes to you to plead for my life. By that act she gives
you the most ample proof that your wager is lost. What would a
gentleman, a man of honour, have done under these circumstances?
What did you do? You seized that last chance; you turned it to the
best account; you made this poor girl buy something from you; you
made her sell herself to you for nothing - pretending that your
nothing was a something of great value. What term shall we apply
to that? To say that you cheated again seems hardly adequate."
"By God, Bardelys!"
"Wait!" I thundered, looking him straight between the eyes, so that
again he sank back cowed. Then resuming the calm with which hitherto
I had addressed him, "Your cupidity," said I, "your greed for the
estates of Bardelys, and your jealousy and thirst to see me
impoverished and so ousted from my position at Court, to leave you
supreme in His Majesty's favour, have put you to strange shifts for
a gentleman, Chatellerault. Yet, wait."
And, dipping my pen in the ink-horn, I began to write. I was
conscious of his eyes upon me, and I could imagine his surmisings
and bewildered speculations as my pen scratched rapidly across the
paper. In a few moments it was done, and I tossed the pen aside.
I took up the sandbox.
"When a man cheats, Monsieur le Comte, and is detected, he is
invariably adjudged the loser of his stakes.
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