The Lions Skin | Page 3

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The Lion's Skin
by Rafael Sabatini

I. THE FANATIC
II. AT THE "ADAM AND EVE"
III. THE WITNESS
IV. Mr. GREEN
V. MOONSHINE
VI. HORTENSIA'S RETURN
VII. FATHER AND SON
VIII. TEMPTATION

IX. THE CHAMPION
X. SPURS TO THE RELUCTANT
XI. THE ASSAULT-AT-ARMS
XII. SUNSHINE AND SHADOW
XIII. THE FORLORN HOPE
XIV. LADY OSTERMORE
XV. LOVE AND RAGE
XVI. Mr. GREEN EXECUTES HIS WARRANT
XVII. AMID THE GRAVES
XVIII. THE GHOST OF THE PAST
XIX. THE END OF LORD OSTERMORE
XX. Mr. CARYLL'S IDENTITY
XXI. THE LION'S SKIN
XXII. THE HUNTERS
XXIII. THE LION

THE LION'S SKIN
CHAPTER I
THE FANATIC
Mr. Caryll, lately from Rome, stood by the window, looking out over
the rainswept, steaming quays to Notre Dame on the island yonder.

Overhead rolled and crackled the artillery of an April thunderstorm,
and Mr. Caryll, looking out upon Paris in her shroud of rain, under her
pall of thundercloud, felt himself at harmony with Nature. Over his
heart, too, the gloom of storm was lowering, just as in his heart it was
still little more than April time.
Behind him, in that chamber furnished in dark oak and leather of a
reign or two ago, sat Sir Richard Everard at a vast writing-table all
a-litter with books and papers; and Sir Richard watched his adoptive
son with fierce, melancholy eyes, watched him until he grew impatient
of this pause.
"Well?" demanded the old baronet harshly. "Will you undertake it,
Justin, now that the chance has come?" And he added: "You'll never
hesitate if you are the man I have sought to make you."
Mr. Caryll turned slowly. "It is because I am the man that you - that
God and you - have made me that I do hesitate."
His voice was quiet and pleasantly modulated, and he spoke English
with the faintest slur - perceptible, perhaps, only to the keenest ear - of
a French accent. To ears less keen it would merely seem that he
articulated with a precision so singular as to verge on pedantry.
The light falling full upon his profile revealed the rather singular
countenance that was his own. It was not in any remarkable beauty that
its distinction lay, for by the canons of beauty that prevail it was not
beautiful. The features were irregular and inclined to harshness, the
nose was too abruptly arched, the chin too long and square, the
complexion too pallid. Yet a certain dignity haunted