Sir William Magnay

“ Peckover's situation with those four glaring eyes and those two matrimonially determined grips upon him was truly deplorable. "I'm a dead man," he gasped, as he saw, over Ethel's reckless shoulder, the awful mail-clad figure raise the sword with grim significance. "I say; stop!" he cried, struggling ungallantly to free himself. "Keep away! I can't marry you!"
"Mr. Gage! Do you mean it?" It was most undignified from both parties' point of view, but the fact must be chronicled that she shook—actually shook him. "Oh, I won't be swindled like this!" she cried, in the height of exasperation. ”

“ But what chance had the humanity, the girl’s real feelings, to expand and flourish enmeshed in the rigid formality and etiquette, in the killing monotony of a German Court? And under the eye, benign and relentless, of that inscrutable, busy state-machine, the Chancellor Rollmar, what play-room could there be for a girl’s spirits and enjoyment of life? Small wonder, he thought, if she broke bounds, careless because ignorant of danger. A girl of high-spirited temperament is not to be completely repressed even by an astute and autocratic Minister. Does not rebellion thrive on oppression? ”

“ The nearly horizontal rays of a setting September sun, red with the promise of a brilliant resurrection on the morrow, struck full against the great elevated timber-line, where, at any rate for a space, European civilization seems to be held in check by the appalling ruggedness and grandeur—the insurmountable wildness of self-assertive nature. The parting glory falling directly on the fringe of the great coniferous belt, threw into more striking relief the blue-black intensity of the forest depths. ”

“ Lady Ormstork assured him.
"He won't go for you; he'll go for me," urged Gage.
"Not he. I'll draw him off," said the lady.
"Suppose he won't be drawn off?" suggested Peckover.
"Trust me," replied Lady Ormstork, grandly confident of her powers. "Diplomacy counts for much."
"Strikes me it will count revolver shots if we aren't careful," said Gage dryly.
Lady Ormstork drew back her mouth in a pitying smile.
"My dear Lord Quorn! This is unworthy of you," she declared. "Do think of Ulrica. Have you so little regard for her? Is not she—superb creature!—worth a little daring?" ”

“ I loathe vanity, but you wilfully shut your eyes to every object but an unworthy one, and compel me to show you myself, a man unlike, certainly, any other man you ever met, you ever could know, a man of a power second to no other one man’s in Europe, a man who is noble in deed, he claims, as in name, and, above all a man who asks nothing better, could better be, than to lay his power, his heart, his very life at your feet, asking you to return, even in a small measure, the devoted all-conquering love with which you have inspired him. ”

“ He could scarcely hope to argue successfully against that baffling attitude of dislike.
“I wish,” he continued, schooling his face and manner to an insinuating humility, “that you would try to find it in your heart to entertain a more favourable estimate of me. Alexia,” he went on passionately, tactfully taking no more than a step forward as he saw her shrink from his advance, “let me call you once by that name, if it is the last time; Alexia, why can you not love me? What, in Heaven’s name, is the curse upon me that gives hate in return where I have beggared myself for love? ”

“ We stood for a while wrestling warily, confining our efforts almost entirely to the arms. I can see now Furello’s horrible face close to mine; it was as though in those critical moments every evil passion of his life, every crime, every knavery, sprang its index into his countenance. If ever the Devil looked out of a man’s eyes, there he was in that glare of desperate vicious hatred and rage. Soon I put forth a greater effort, and to my relief it confirmed the idea that my adversary’s strength was less than my own. ”

“ THE EYES IN THE CLEFT
The giant trees of the great forest streaked the velvety glades with their lengthening shadows as the autumn sun touched the broken outline of the mountain screen and sent the last of its blaze sweeping through the valley and flooding its alleys with purple light. A solitary ray, finding, as it were, the clue to the maze where the forest was thickest, stretched with insistent brilliance across a natural arbour which lay in the most sheltered recesses of the woodland depths. ”

“ At least I give you credit for self-deception. And, if I might offer a piece of advice, as an older man who has seen much of the world, I would suggest that the sooner you recognize the wisdom of setting the world’s enjoyment before you in the best light the less regret will you have to look forward to. The maze of pleasure has so many paths and windings, each delightful enough when you turn into it, but getting more and more dreary as you go on, till it ends in blankness and disgust. ”

“ Probably Rallenstein already believes me dead, but this man, Furello——”
“Ah!” I could guess the story now. “He is in love with you?”
She nodded. “He will spare my life if I will marry him. Marry him! Ah, mein Gott! is it not horrible? This murderer, this unspeakable villain. Be his wife! And for how long? He dare not let me live even if he should wish. Already they say he has killed one wife and is secretly married now.”
“To a lady whom he passes off as his sister. She knows you are here?”
“I cannot tell. What must her life be, poor woman!” ”

“ Herriard responded. “You may trust me not to breathe a hint of it.”
“To any one?”
“To any one.”
“Not even to your fiancée, Countess Alexia?”
“No; not even to her.” To Alexia least of all, he thought.
Gastineau smoked in silence for a few seconds, inhaling the smoke slowly, as though formulating a plan of explanation. “I am like a man newly risen from the dead;” he spoke deliberately with a curious tenseness; “or rather, like one born in manhood instead of infancy. Life has come upon me so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that I am bewildered. I cannot look ahead yet, cannot order my existence.” ”

“ Gage was out riding one afternoon, exploring the roads and bridle-paths of the neighbourhood alone, for, since his adventure with Harlequin, Peckover had decided that life on five thousand a year was too precious to risk on horseback. He was jogging along a woodland road, turning over in his mind plans for the extraction of more fun than he was just then getting out of his purchased dignity, when suddenly a turn in the way gave him a glimpse of the well-known figures of the ladies from the Moat who did not exactly fit in with the distractions he was seeking. ”

“ So she stood, a superb specimen of womanhood, with an expression of quiet courage on her face, handling her rapier with natural grace: it was as though a lion were opposed to a leopard; both were in earnest, yet perhaps hardly conscious that the result of this unwitnessed duel might mean murder.
In a moment their light rapiers had touched, and at the contact all Royda’s fury, which had lately been restrained, seemed to rush forth at her very sword’s point. ”

“ But Ruperta would not allow herself to admit this. She was reckless, as strong characters bent on desperate enterprises ever will be. To hesitate, to look back and calculate the chances, when once the boats are burnt, is the last thing a resolute mind will do; madness or not, it must be gone through with; what the future has in store is to be met boldly when it comes, but not anticipated.
When the journey was roughest, the scene most dismal, and Minna’s sinking heart forced an exclamation of despair, “It is better than Krell,” Ruperta said resolutely, and that seemed enough. ”

“ The blazing eyes protruded from their sockets, the swollen lips, jet black were drawn back into a frightful grin; the man was a human being no longer; it seemed as though he were already a devil, as hideous as the imagination of man ever conceived. The sight brought back to me poor Szalay’s appearance in his death agony, but the effect of the poison here was indescribably more fearful. ”

“ THE FIERY ORDEAL BEFORE many days had passed Countess Alexia had reason to know that the enemy she had made and defied was at work against her. Her instinctive judgment of her unwelcome admirer’s character had surely prepared her for this. And in truth Aubrey Playford was one of those men whose chivalry is but skin-deep: it is merely the veneer of their education and breeding, the mask which covers a malignant and unscrupulous soul. The man could be trusted to act according to the recognized codes of honour and propriety so long as his own interest and feelings were not deeply touched ”

“ The great rock-hewn room, the array of still, mail-clad figures, standing like ghostly spectators of a more singular combat than the wearers of the armour in life had ever witnessed, the line stretching away into the obscurity of the farther end of the room, while the half light was reflected by the burnished plates of the nearest figures on to the two women, warm and panting with life and excitement, confronting each other in what might be deadly combat. ”

“ Gage remarked gloomily.
"Tell you what it is, my friend," said Peckover. "The sooner you bring yourself to consider Ulrica a thing of the past the better chance you'll have of making old bones. Ethel and Dagmar may not be all our fancy painted, but at least they haven't got a blood-thirsty Spanish nob hanging about them with traditions and a nasty way of talking polite flummery with a revolver playfully pointed at the vital parts of your anatomy all the time. You won't have a ducal freak poking his long nose in there." ”