The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 345: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

328 REYNOLDS’ WORKS village. Thereupon I questioned them, and wormed out as much of your antecedents as they themselves were ac- quainted with. Little did they think they were making all these revelations to your own husband! Well, the man came back trom Barcelona with the ransom, a thousand pounds, calculated by vour English money, and the Durands were suffered to depart.’’ Juliana could really have forgiven her husband for this one robbery, inasmuch as it had been perpetrated upon the individuals who betrayed their knowledge of her past career. ‘You may conceive,’ resumed Ramon de Collantes, ‘“ how terrified I was when, a few davs aiter my return to the cottage, we beheld the Durands alighting from the post- chaise on their way homeward. I rushed up to them, as you saw me. I was only just in time to stop the ejaculations of complete betrayal which were bursting from their lips. ‘Say nothing,’ I whispered, in a hurried voice, ‘ and your money shall be restored!’ ‘They required nothing better, and I accompanied them into the inn. They had seen you with me, and as we entered the tavern, the landlord officiously exclaimed, ‘ Good day, my Lord Count of Toledo!’ The Durands thus discovered that your husband was none other than the famous Ramon de Collantes. Knowing therefore that we resided in the neighbourhood, they unhesitatingly agreed to wait while I hastened home to get the thousand pounds to restore tothem. ‘This made an immense hole in all my share of plunder which I had brought away from Spain a few days back, but I might have put up with that loss lightly if I could have trusted the Durands. When, how- ever, they had received their money, and had taken their de- parture, I began to reflect that I was not safe with such gossips and scandal-mongers. ‘Therefore my resolve was taken to bid farewell to France; for, as I had plundered a French subject, although in another country, yet I was well aware that the authorities, if once put on the alert, would arrest me at a venture, so that if a French tribunal declared itself incompetent to try me for a deed done in Spain, the gendarmes would nevertheless have marched me over the frontier and given me into the custody of the Spanish author- ities at Figueras. Well, what I apprehended on the part of those Durands came to pass. On leaving the village, they must have given information at the very next town concerf- CONNIE LOOKS (E(0)