A Fascinating Traitor: An Anglo-Indian StorySavage, Richard
General
A Fascinating Traitor: An Anglo-Indian Story
Savage, Richard
India -- Fiction
“Bring your friend--that other Lord,” cried the departing Miss Genie,
waving a thousand-franc lace fan, as she sagely observed, “Two’s
company--three’s none. We’ll have a jolly lark--us four. Don’t forget,
now!” The polite Major laid his hand upon his heart and played the
amiable tiger, although burning inwardly now, in a fierce personal
jealousy of Anstruther as he wandered alone around the cold gray halls
of the museum, and gazed upon the pinched features of the permanently
eclipsed shining lights of the “Bulwark of Civil and Religious Liberty.”
There was no charm for him in the bigoted ferocity of Calvin’s lean,
dark face, smacking his thin lips over the roasted Servetus. He abhorred
the departed heroes of the golden evolution from Eidegenossen into
Higuerios and later Huguenots. They interested him not, neither did he
love Professor Calame’s scratchy pictures, nor the jumbled bric-a-brac
of art and history. None of these charmed him. He waited only for the
gliding step, the clasp of a burning hand, and the flash of the lustrous
dark-brown eyes. It was his own innings now.
He had referred to his watch for the fiftieth time, when, from a closed
carriage, the object of his mental vituperations gracefully alighted
at last. It was with the very coldest of bows that the irritated man
received the graceful, self-possessed woman, whose lovely face was but
partially hidden by her coquettishly dotted veil.
“She dresses like a Parisienne, walks like an Andalu-sian, and has
all the seductiveness of a Polish countess!” the quick-witted rascal
thought, as they strolled into the museum, which the departed General
Rath knew not would be the scene of many a hidden love intrigue, when
he endowed it with a benevolent vanity. The two wary strangers strolled
along until they found a retired corner. Madame Louison seated herself,
waving her lace parasol with the impatient gesture of one accustomed to
command.
Alan Hawke was in no gentle humor, and his cheeks reddened as he
felt the calm scrutiny of the woman’s searching glances. He was now
determined to take the whip hand, and to keep it. His accents were
staccato as he said, “Tell me now who you are, and what you wish of
me!” A clock, hung high over them on the dreary, drab walls, ticked away
brusquely, as the angered woman gazed steadily into his face.
“And so your little windfall of last night has already made you
impudent? If you cannot find another tone at once, I will find another
agent! The man whom you plucked has told me the story of your wonderful
skill at cards!” The sneer cut the renegade like a whip lash, and Alan
Hawke sprang up in anger. Madame Berthe Louison coolly settled herself
down into the red cushions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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