



Produced by Walter Debeuf, Project Gutenberg volunteer.





I Will Repay.

By Baroness Orczy.




PROLOGUE.


I

Paris: 1783.


"Coward! Coward! Coward!"

The words rang out, clear, strident, passionate, in a crescendo of
agonised humiliation.

The boy, quivering with rage, had sprung to his feet, and, losing his
balance, he fell forward clutching at the table, whilst with a
convulsive movement of the lids, he tried in vain to suppress the tears
of shame which were blinding him.

"Coward!" He tried to shout the insult so that all might hear, but his
parched throat refused him service, his trembling hand sought the
scattered cards upon the table, he collected them together, quickly,
nervously, fingering them with feverish energy, then he hurled them at
the man opposite, whilst with a final effort he still contrived to
mutter: "Coward!"

The older men tried to interpose, but the young ones only laughed, quite
prepared for the adventure which must inevitably ensue, the only
possible ending to a quarrel such as this.

Conciliation or arbitration was out of the question. Deroulede should
have known better than to speak disrespectfully of Adele de Montcheri,
when the little Vicomte de Marny's infatuation for the notorious beauty
had been the talk of Paris and Versailles these many months past.

Adele was very lovely and a veritable tower of greed and egotism. The
Marnys were rich and the little Vicomte very young, and just now the
brightly-plumaged hawk was busy plucking the latest pigeon, newly
arrived from its ancestral cote.

The boy was still in the initial stage of his infatuation. To him Adele
was a paragon of all the virtues