Phroso. Anthony Hope
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Название: Phroso
Автор: Anthony Hope
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 4057664561770
isbn:
I got no answer; only a frightened look appealed to me in the white glare of Hogvardt’s lantern. I came a step nearer and leant forward to ask my next question.
‘Who are you? What’s your name?’
‘My name—my name?’ stammered the prisoner. ‘I won’t tell my name.’
‘You’ll tell me nothing? You heard what I promised my friend?’
‘Yes, I heard,’ said the lad, with a face utterly pale, but with eyes that were again set in fierce determination.
I laughed a low laugh.
‘I believe you are fit for the trade after all,’ said I, and I looked at him with mingled distaste and admiration. But I had my last weapon still, my last question. I turned the lantern full on his face, I leant forward again, and I said in distinct slow tones—and the question sounded an absurd one to be spoken in such an impressive way:
‘Do you generally wear—clothes like that?’
I had got home with that question. The pallor vanished, the haughty eyes sank. I saw long drooping lashes and a burning flush, and the boy’s face once again sought his hands.
At that moment I heard chairs pushed back in the kitchen. In came Hogvardt with an amused smile on his broad face; in came Watkins with his impassive acquiescence in anything that his lordship might order; in came Master Denny brandishing his whip in jovial relentlessness.
‘Well, has he told you anything?’ cried Denny. It was plain that he hoped for the answer ‘No.’
‘I have asked him half-a-dozen questions,’ said I, ‘and he has not answered one.’
‘All right,’ said Denny, with wonderful emphasis.
Had I been wrong to extort this much punishment for my most inhospitable reception? Sometimes now I think that I was cruel. In that night much had occurred to breed viciousness in a man of the most equable temper. But the thing had now gone to the extreme limit to which it could go, and I said to Denny:
‘It’s a gross case of obstinacy, of course, Denny, but I don’t see very well how we can horsewhip the lady.’
A sudden astounded cry, ‘The lady!’ rang from three pairs of lips, while the lady herself dropped her head on the table and fenced her face round about with her protecting arms.
‘You see,’ said I, ‘this lady is the Lady Euphrosyne.’
For who else could it be that would give orders to Constantine Stefanopoulos, and ask where ‘my people’ were? Who else, I also asked myself, save the daughter of the noble house, would boast the air, the hands, the face, that graced our young prisoner? And who else would understand English? In all certainty here was the Lady Euphrosyne.
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