The seconds, who were well disposed to both parties, alone
knew how much or how little powder there was in the pistols, and they
were discreet men, who kept the secret.
The door leading to the antechamber was wide open, and the Baroness
went on deliberately, looking about through her hand-glass, in the
half light, for the shutters were not all open. Dust everywhere, the
dust that falls silently at night from the ancient wooden ceilings and
painted beams of Roman palaces, the dust of centuries accumulated
above and sifting for ever to the floors below. It was on the yellow
marble pier tables, on the dim mirrors in their eighteenth century
frames, on the high canopy draped with silver and black beneath which
the effigy of another big cheeky eagle seemed to be silently moulting
under his antique crown, the emblem of a race that had lived almost on
the same spot for eight hundred years, through good and bad repute,
but in nearly uninterrupted prosperity. The Baroness, who hankered
after greatness, felt that the gloom was a twilight of gods. She stood
still before the canopy, the symbol of princely rank and privilege,
the invisible silk bellows were silent for a few seconds, and she
wondered whether there were any procurable sum which she and her
husband would grudge in exchange for the acknowledged right to display
a crowned eagle, cheeky, argent and sable, in their hall, under a
canopy draped with their own colours.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25