He threw open one of the doors that gave on the landing and politely stood aside that his visitor might pass through. Diogenes entered the room: he heard the door being closed behind him, and thought that Mynheer Beresteyn had followed him in.
The room was very dimly lighted by a couple of tallow candles that flickered in their sconces, and at first he could not see into the dark recesses of the room. But presently something moved, something ethereal and intangible, white and exquisite. It stirred from out the depths of the huge high-backed chair, and from out the gloom there came a little cry of surprise and of joy which was as the call of bird or angel.
He did not dare to move, he scarcely dared to breathe. He looked round for Mynheer Beresteyn who had disappeared.
Surely this could be only a dream. Nothing real on earth could be so exquisite as that subtle vision which he had of her now, sitting in the high-backed chair, leaning slightly forward toward him. Gradually his eyes became accustomed to the gloom: he could see her quite distinctly now, her fair curls round her perfect head, her red lips parted, her eyes fixed upon him with a look which he dared not interpret.
All around him was the silence and the darkness of the night, and he was alone with her just as he had been in this very room five days ago and then again at Rotterdam.
“St. Bavon, you rogue!” he murmured, “where are you? How dare you leave me in the lurch like this?”
Then—how it all happened he could not himself have told you—he suddenly found himself at her feet, kneeling beside the high-backed chair; his arms were round her shoulders and he could feel the exquisite perfume of her breath upon his cheek.
“St. Bavon,” he cried exultingly to himself, “go away, you rogue! there’s no need for your admonitions now.”
Mynheer Beresteyn tiptoed quietly into the room. The roguish smile still played around his lips. He came up close to the high-backed chair and placed his hand upon his daughter’s head.
Diogenes looked up, and met the kindly eyes of the old man fixed with calm earnestness upon him.
“Mynheer,” he said, and laughter which contained a world of happiness as well as of joy danced and sparkled in every line of his face, “just now I refused one half of your fortune! But ’tis your greatest treasure I claim from you now.”
“Nay! you rascal,” rejoined Beresteyn, as he lifted his daughter’s chin gently with one finger and looked into her deep blue eyes which were brimful of happiness, “methinks that that treasure is yours already!”
“Go back, good St. Bavon,” cried the Laughing Cavalier in an ecstasy of joy, “your heaven—you rogue—is not more perfect than this.”
Colophon
The Laughing Cavalier
was published in 1914 by
Baroness Orczy.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Vince Rice,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2010 by
Brenda Lewis, Mary Meehan, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
The Laughing Cavalier,
a painting completed in 1624 by
Frans Hals.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
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Uncopyright
May you do good and not evil.
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