Alice sprang far back, lowered her point and laughed.
"Je vous salue, Monsieur Beverley!" she cried, with childlike show
of delight. "Did you feel the button?"
"Yes, I felt it," he said with frank acknowledgment in his voice,
"it was cleverly done. Now give me a chance to redeem myself."
He began more carefully and found that she, too, was on her best
mettle; but it was a short bout, as before. Alice seemed to give
him an easy opening and he accepted it with a thrust; then
something happened that he did not understand. The point of his
foil was somehow caught under his opponent's hilt-guard while her
blade seemed to twist around his; at the same time there was a
wring and a jerk, the like of which he had never before felt, and
he was disarmed, his wrist and fingers aching with the wrench they
had received.
Of course the thing was not new; he had been disarmed before; but
her trick of doing it was quite a mystery to him, altogether
different from any that he had ever seen.
"Vous me pardonnerez, Monsieur" she mockingly exclaimed, picking
up his weapon and offering the hilt to him. "Here is your sword!"
"Keep it," he said, folding his arms and trying to look
unconcerned, "you have captured it fairly. I am at your mercy; be
kind to me."
Madame Roussillon and Jean, the hunchback, hearing the racket of
the foils had come out to see and were standing agape.
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