The Scarlet Pimpernel

CHAPTER I.

PARIS: SEPTEMBER, 1792

A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in name, for
to the eye and ear they seem naught but savage creatures, animated by vile
passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate. The hour, some little time
before sunset, and the place, the West Barricade, at the very spot where, a
decade later, a proud tyrant raised an undying monument to the nation’s
glory and his own vanity.

During the greater part of the day the guillotine had been kept busy at its
ghastly work: all that France had boasted of in the past centuries, of ancient
names, and blue blood, had paid toll to her desire for liberty and for
fraternity. The carnage had only ceased at this late hour of the day because
there were other more interesting sights for the people to witness, a little
while before the final closing of the barricades for the night.

And so the crowd rushed away from the Place de la Grève and made for the
various barricades in order to watch this interesting and amusing sight.

It was to be seen every day, for those aristos were such fools! They were
traitors to the people of course, all of them, men, women, and children, who
happened to be descendants of the great men who since the Crusades had made the
glory of France: her old noblesse. Their ancestors had oppressed the
people, had crushed them under the scarlet heels of their dainty buckled shoes,
and now the people had become the rulers of France and crushed their former
masters—not beneath their heel, for they went shoeless mostly in these
days—but beneath a more effectual weight, the knife of the guillotine.

And daily, hourly, the hideous instrument of torture claimed its many
victims—old men, young women, tiny children, even until the day when it
would finally demand the head of a King and of a beautiful young Queen.

But this was as it should be: were not the people now the rulers of France?
Every aristocrat was a traitor, as his ancestors had been before him: for two
hundred years now the people had sweated, and toiled, and starved, to keep a
lustful court in lavish extravagance; now the descendants of those who had
helped to make those courts brilliant had to hide for their lives—to fly,
if they wished to avoid the tardy vengeance of the people.

And they did try to hide, and tried to fly: that was just the fun of the whole
thing. Every afternoon before the gates closed and the market carts went out in
procession by the various barricades, some fool of an aristo endeavoured to
evade the clutches of the Committee of Public Safety. In various disguises,
under various pretexts, they tried to slip through the barriers which were so
well guarded by citizen soldiers of the Republic. Men in women’s clothes,
women in male attire, children disguised in beggars’ rags: there were
some of all sorts: ci-devant counts, marquises, even dukes, who wanted
to fly from France, reach England or some other equally accursed country, and
there try to rouse foreign feeling against the glorious Revolution, or to raise
an army in order to liberate the wretched prisoners in the Temple, who had once
called themselves sovereigns of France.

But they were nearly always caught at the barricades. Sergeant Bibot especially
at the West Gate had a wonderful nose for scenting an aristo in the most
perfect disguise. Then, of course, the fun began. Bibot would look at his prey
as a cat looks upon the mouse, play with him, sometimes for quite a quarter of
an hour, pretend to be hoodwinked by the disguise, by the wigs and other bits
of theatrical make-up which hid the identity of a ci-devant noble
marquise or count.

Oh! Bibot had a keen sense of humour, and it was well worth hanging round that
West Barricade, in order to see him catch an aristo in the very act of trying
to flee from the vengeance of the people.

Sometimes Bibot would let his prey actually out by the gates, allowing him to
think for the space of two minutes at least that he really had escaped out of
Paris, and might even manage to reach the coast of England in safety, but Bibot
would let the unfortunate wretch walk about ten mètres towards the open
country, then he would send two men after him and bring him back, stripped of
his disguise.

Oh! that was extremely funny, for as often as not the fugitive would prove to
be a woman, some proud marchioness, who looked terribly comical when she found
herself in Bibot’s clutches after all, and knew that a summary trial
would await her the next day and after that, the fond embrace of Madame la
Guillotine.

No wonder that on this fine afternoon in September the crowd round
Bibot’s gate was eager and excited. The lust of blood grows with its
satisfaction, there is no satiety: the crowd had seen a hundred noble heads
fall beneath the guillotine to-day, it wanted to make sure that it would see
another hundred fall on the morrow.

Bibot was sitting on an overturned and empty cask close by the gate of the
barricade; a small detachment of citoyen soldiers was under his command. The
work had been very hot lately. Those cursed aristos were becoming terrified and
tried their hardest to slip out of Paris: men, women and children, whose
ancestors, even in remote ages, had served those traitorous Bourbons, were all
traitors themselves and right food for the guillotine. Every day Bibot had had
the satisfaction of unmasking some fugitive royalists and sending them back to
be tried by the Committee of Public Safety, presided over by that good patriot,
Citoyen Foucquier-Tinville.

Robespierre and Danton both had commended Bibot for his zeal, and Bibot was
proud of the fact that he on his own initiative had sent at least fifty aristos
to the guillotine.

But to-day all the sergeants in command at the various barricades had had
special orders. Recently a very great number of aristos had succeeded in
escaping out of France and in reaching England safely. There were curious
rumours about these escapes; they had become very frequent and singularly
daring; the people’s minds were becoming strangely excited about it all.
Sergeant Grospierre had been sent to the guillotine for allowing a whole family
of aristos to slip out of the North Gate under his very nose.

It was asserted that these escapes were organised by a band of Englishmen,
whose daring seemed to be unparalleled, and who, from sheer desire to meddle in
what did not concern them, spent their spare time in snatching away lawful
victims destined for Madame la Guillotine. These rumours soon grew in
extravagance; there was no doubt that this band of meddlesome Englishmen did
exist; moreover, they seemed to be under the leadership of a man whose pluck
and audacity were almost fabulous. Strange stories were afloat of how he and
those aristos whom he rescued became suddenly invisible as they reached the
barricades and escaped out of the gates by sheer supernatural agency.

No one had seen these mysterious Englishmen; as for their leader, he was never
spoken of, save with a superstitious shudder. Citoyen Foucquier-Tinville would
in the course of the day receive a scrap of paper from some mysterious source;
sometimes he would find it in the pocket of his coat, at others it would be
handed to him by someone in the crowd, whilst he was on his way to the sitting
of the Committee of Public Safety. The paper always contained a brief notice
that the band of meddlesome Englishmen were at work, and it was always signed
with a device drawn in red—a little star-shaped flower, which we in
England call the Scarlet Pimpernel. Within a few hours of the receipt of this
impudent notice, the citoyens of the Committee of Public Safety would hear that
so many royalists and aristocrats had succeeded in reaching the coast, and were
on their way to England and safety.

The guards at the gates had been doubled, the sergeants in command had been
threatened with death, whilst liberal rewards were offered for the capture of
these daring and impudent Englishmen. There was a sum of five thousand francs
promised to the man who laid hands on the mysterious and elusive Scarlet
Pimpernel.

Everyone felt that Bibot would be that man, and Bibot allowed that belief to
take firm root in everybody’s mind; and so, day after day, people came to
watch him at the West Gate, so as to be present when he laid hands on any
fugitive aristo who perhaps might be accompanied by that mysterious Englishman.

“Bah!” he said to his trusted corporal, “Citoyen Grospierre
was a fool! Had it been me now, at that North Gate last week . . .”

Citoyen Bibot spat on the ground to express his contempt for his
comrade’s stupidity.

“How did it happen, citoyen?” asked the corporal.

“Grospierre was at the gate, keeping good watch,” began Bibot,
pompously, as the crowd closed in round him, listening eagerly to his
narrative. “We’ve all heard of this meddlesome Englishman, this
accursed Scarlet Pimpernel. He won’t get through my gate,
morbleu! unless he be the devil himself. But Grospierre was a fool. The
market carts were going through the gates; there was one laden with casks, and
driven by an old man, with a boy beside him. Grospierre was a bit drunk, but he
thought himself very clever; he looked into the casks—most of them, at
least—and saw they were empty, and let the cart go through.”

A murmur of wrath and contempt went round the group of ill-clad wretches, who
crowded round Citoyen Bibot.

“Half an hour later,” continued the sergeant, “up comes a
captain of the guard with a squad of some dozen soldiers with him. ‘Has a
cart gone through?’ he asks of Grospierre, breathlessly.
‘Yes,’ says Grospierre, ‘not half an hour ago.’
‘And you have let them escape,’ shouts the captain furiously.
‘You’ll go to the guillotine for this, citoyen sergeant! that cart
held concealed the ci-devant Duc de Chalis and all his family!’
‘What!’ thunders Grospierre, aghast. ‘Aye! and the driver was
none other than that cursed Englishman, the Scarlet Pimpernel.’”

A howl of execration greeted this tale. Citoyen Grospierre had paid for his
blunder on the guillotine, but what a fool! oh! what a fool!

Bibot was laughing so much at his own tale that it was some time before he
could continue.

“‘After them, my men,’ shouts the captain,” he said,
after a while, “‘remember the reward; after them, they cannot have
gone far!’ And with that he rushes through the gate, followed by his
dozen soldiers.”

“But it was too late!” shouted the crowd, excitedly.

“They never got them!”

“Curse that Grospierre for his folly!”

“He deserved his fate!”

“Fancy not examining those casks properly!”

But these sallies seemed to amuse Citoyen Bibot exceedingly; he laughed until
his sides ached, and the tears streamed down his cheeks.

“Nay, nay!” he said at last, “those aristos weren’t in
the cart; the driver was not the Scarlet Pimpernel!”

“What?”

“No! The captain of the guard was that damned Englishman in disguise, and
every one of his soldiers aristos!”

The crowd this time said nothing: the story certainly savoured of the
supernatural, and though the Republic had abolished God, it had not quite
succeeded in killing the fear of the supernatural in the hearts of the people.
Truly that Englishman must be the devil himself.

The sun was sinking low down in the west. Bibot prepared himself to close the
gates.

“En avant the carts,” he said.

Some dozen covered carts were drawn up in a row, ready to leave town, in order
to fetch the produce from the country close by, for market the next morning.
They were mostly well known to Bibot, as they went through his gate twice every
day on their way to and from the town. He spoke to one or two of their
drivers—mostly women—and was at great pains to examine the inside
of the carts.

“You never know,” he would say, “and I’m not going to
be caught like that fool Grospierre.”

The women who drove the carts usually spent their day on the Place de la Grève,
beneath the platform of the guillotine, knitting and gossiping, whilst they
watched the rows of tumbrils arriving with the victims the Reign of Terror
claimed every day. It was great fun to see the aristos arriving for the
reception of Madame la Guillotine, and the places close by the platform were
very much sought after. Bibot, during the day, had been on duty on the Place.
He recognized most of the old hags, “tricotteuses,” as they were
called, who sat there and knitted, whilst head after head fell beneath the
knife, and they themselves got quite bespattered with the blood of those cursed
aristos.

“Hé! la mère!” said Bibot to one of these horrible hags,
“what have you got there?”

He had seen her earlier in the day, with her knitting and the whip of her cart
close beside her. Now she had fastened a row of curly locks to the whip handle,
all colours, from gold to silver, fair to dark, and she stroked them with her
huge, bony fingers as she laughed at Bibot.

“I made friends with Madame Guillotine’s lover,” she said
with a coarse laugh, “he cut these off for me from the heads as they
rolled down. He has promised me some more to-morrow, but I don’t know if
I shall be at my usual place.”

“Ah! how is that, la mère?” asked Bibot, who, hardened soldier
though he was, could not help shuddering at the awful loathsomeness of this
semblance of a woman, with her ghastly trophy on the handle of her whip.

“My grandson has got the small-pox,” she said with a jerk of her
thumb towards the inside of her cart, “some say it’s the plague! If
it is, I sha’n’t be allowed to come into Paris to-morrow.”

At the first mention of the word small-pox, Bibot had stepped hastily
backwards, and when the old hag spoke of the plague, he retreated from her as
fast as he could.

“Curse you!” he muttered, whilst the whole crowd hastily avoided
the cart, leaving it standing all alone in the midst of the place.

The old hag laughed.

“Curse you, citoyen, for being a coward,” she said. “Bah!
what a man to be afraid of sickness.”

“Morbleu! the plague!”

Everyone was awe-struck and silent, filled with horror for the loathsome
malady, the one thing which still had the power to arouse terror and disgust in
these savage, brutalised creatures.

“Get out with you and with your plague-stricken brood!” shouted
Bibot, hoarsely.

And with another rough laugh and coarse jest, the old hag whipped up her lean
nag and drove her cart out of the gate.

This incident had spoilt the afternoon. The people were terrified of these two
horrible curses, the two maladies which nothing could cure, and which were the
precursors of an awful and lonely death. They hung about the barricades, silent
and sullen for a while, eyeing one another suspiciously, avoiding each other as
if by instinct, lest the plague lurked already in their midst. Presently, as in
the case of Grospierre, a captain of the guard appeared suddenly. But he was
known to Bibot, and there was no fear of his turning out to be a sly Englishman
in disguise.

“A cart, . . .” he shouted breathlessly, even before he had reached
the gates.

“What cart?” asked Bibot, roughly.

“Driven by an old hag. . . . A covered cart . . .”

“There were a dozen . . .”

“An old hag who said her son had the plague?”

“Yes . . .”

“You have not let them go?”

“Morbleu!” said Bibot, whose purple cheeks had suddenly
become white with fear.

“The cart contained the ci-devant Comtesse de Tournay and her two
children, all of them traitors and condemned to death.”

“And their driver?” muttered Bibot, as a superstitious shudder ran
down his spine.

“Sacré tonnerre,” said the captain, “but it is feared
that it was that accursed Englishman himself—the Scarlet
Pimpernel.”

CHAPTER II.

“THE FISHERMAN’S REST”

In the kitchen Sally was extremely busy—saucepans and frying-pans were
standing in rows on the gigantic hearth, the huge stock-pot stood in a corner,
and the jack turned with slow deliberation, and presented alternately to the
glow every side of a noble sirloin of beef. The two little kitchen-maids
bustled around, eager to help, hot and panting, with cotton sleeves well tucked
up above the dimpled elbows, and giggling over some private jokes of their own,
whenever Miss Sally’s back was turned for a moment. And old Jemima,
stolid in temper and solid in bulk, kept up a long and subdued grumble, while
she stirred the stock-pot methodically over the fire.

“What ho! Sally!” came in cheerful if none too melodious accents
from the coffee-room close by.

“Lud bless my soul!” exclaimed Sally, with a good-humoured laugh,
“what be they all wanting now, I wonder!”

“Beer, of course,” grumbled Jemima, “you don’t
’xpect Jimmy Pitkin to ’ave done with one tankard, do ye?”

“Mr. ’Arry, ’e looked uncommon thirsty too,” simpered
Martha, one of the little kitchen-maids; and her beady black eyes twinkled as
they met those of her companion, whereupon both started on a round of short and
suppressed giggles.

Sally looked cross for a moment, and thoughtfully rubbed her hands against her
shapely hips; her palms were itching, evidently, to come in contact with
Martha’s rosy cheeks—but inherent good-humour prevailed, and with a
pout and a shrug of the shoulders, she turned her attention to the fried
potatoes.

“What ho, Sally! hey, Sally!”

And a chorus of pewter mugs, tapped with impatient hands against the oak tables
of the coffee-room, accompanied the shouts for mine host’s buxom
daughter.

“Sally!” shouted a more persistent voice, “are ye goin’
to be all night with that there beer?”

“I do think father might get the beer for them,” muttered Sally, as
Jemima, stolidly and without further comment, took a couple of foam-crowned
jugs from the shelf, and began filling a number of pewter tankards with some of
that home-brewed ale for which “The Fisherman’s Rest” had
been famous since the days of King Charles. “’E knows ’ow
busy we are in ’ere.”

“Your father is too busy discussing politics with Mr. ’Empseed to
worry ’isself about you and the kitchen,” grumbled Jemima under her
breath.

Sally had gone to the small mirror which hung in a corner of the kitchen, and
was hastily smoothing her hair and setting her frilled cap at its most becoming
angle over her dark curls; then she took up the tankards by their handles,
three in each strong, brown hand, and laughing, grumbling, blushing, carried
them through into the coffee-room.

There, there was certainly no sign of that bustle and activity which kept four
women busy and hot in the glowing kitchen beyond.

The coffee-room of “The Fisherman’s Rest” is a show place now
at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the end of the eighteenth, in the
year of grace 1792, it had not yet gained that notoriety and importance which a
hundred additional years and the craze of the age have since bestowed upon it.
Yet it was an old place, even then, for the oak rafters and beams were already
black with age—as were the panelled seats, with their tall backs, and the
long polished tables between, on which innumerable pewter tankards had left
fantastic patterns of many-sized rings. In the leaded window, high up, a row of
pots of scarlet geraniums and blue larkspur gave the bright note of colour
against the dull background of the oak.

That Mr. Jellyband, landlord of “The Fisherman’s Rest” at
Dover, was a prosperous man, was of course clear to the most casual observer.
The pewter on the fine old dressers, the brass above the gigantic hearth, shone
like silver and gold—the red-tiled floor was as brilliant as the scarlet
geranium on the window sill—this meant that his servants were good and
plentiful, that the custom was constant, and of that order which necessitated
the keeping up of the coffee-room to a high standard of elegance and order.

As Sally came in, laughing through her frowns, and displaying a row of dazzling
white teeth, she was greeted with shouts and chorus of applause.

“Why, here’s Sally! What ho, Sally! Hurrah for pretty Sally!”

“I thought you’d grown deaf in that kitchen of yours,”
muttered Jimmy Pitkin, as he passed the back of his hand across his very dry
lips.

“All ri’! all ri’!” laughed Sally, as she deposited the
freshly-filled tankards upon the tables, “why, what a ’urry, to be
sure! And is your gran’mother a-dyin’ an’ you wantin’
to see the pore soul afore she’m gone! I never see’d such a mighty
rushin’!”

A chorus of good-humoured laughter greeted this witticism, which gave the
company there present food for many jokes, for some considerable time. Sally
now seemed in less of a hurry to get back to her pots and pans. A young man
with fair curly hair, and eager, bright blue eyes, was engaging most of her
attention and the whole of her time, whilst broad witticisms anent Jimmy
Pitkin’s fictitious grandmother flew from mouth to mouth, mixed with
heavy puffs of pungent tobacco smoke.

Facing the hearth, his legs wide apart, a long clay pipe in his mouth, stood
mine host himself, worthy Mr. Jellyband, landlord of “The
Fisherman’s Rest,” as his father had been before him, aye, and his
grandfather and great-grandfather too, for that matter. Portly in build, jovial
in countenance and somewhat bald of pate, Mr. Jellyband was indeed a typical
rural John Bull of those days—the days when our prejudiced insularity was
at its height, when to an Englishman, be he lord, yeoman, or peasant, the whole
of the continent of Europe was a den of immorality, and the rest of the world
an unexploited land of savages and cannibals.

There he stood, mine worthy host, firm and well set up on his limbs, smoking
his long churchwarden and caring nothing for nobody at home, and despising
everybody abroad. He wore the typical scarlet waistcoat, with shiny brass
buttons, the corduroy breeches, the grey worsted stockings and smart buckled
shoes, that characterised every self-respecting innkeeper in Great Britain in
these days—and while pretty, motherless Sally had need of four pairs of
brown hands to do all the work that fell on her shapely shoulders, worthy
Jellyband discussed the affairs of nations with his most privileged guests.

The coffee-room indeed, lighted by two well-polished lamps, which hung from the
raftered ceiling, looked cheerful and cosy in the extreme. Through the dense
clouds of tobacco smoke that hung about in every corner, the faces of Mr.
Jellyband’s customers appeared red and pleasant to look at, and on good
terms with themselves, their host and all the world; from every side of the
room loud guffaws accompanied pleasant, if not highly intellectual,
conversation—while Sally’s repeated giggles testified to the good
use Mr. Harry Waite was making of the short time she seemed inclined to spare
him.

They were mostly fisher-folk who patronised Mr. Jellyband’s coffee-room,
but fishermen are known to be very thirsty people; the salt which they breathe
in, when they are on the sea, accounts for their parched throats when on shore.
But “The Fisherman’s Rest” was something more than a
rendezvous for these humble folk. The London and Dover coach started from the
hostel daily, and passengers who had come across the Channel, and those who
started for the “grand tour,” all became acquainted with Mr.
Jellyband, his French wines and his home-brewed ales.

It was towards the close of September, 1792, and the weather which had been
brilliant and hot throughout the month had suddenly broken up; for two days
torrents of rain had deluged the south of England, doing its level best to ruin
what chances the apples and pears and late plums had of becoming really fine,
self-respecting fruit. Even now it was beating against the leaded windows, and
tumbling down the chimney, making the cheerful wood fire sizzle in the hearth.

“Lud! did you ever see such a wet September, Mr. Jellyband?” asked
Mr. Hempseed.

He sat in one of the seats inside the hearth, did Mr. Hempseed, for he was an
authority and an important personage not only at “The Fisherman’s
Rest,” where Mr. Jellyband always made a special selection of him as a
foil for political arguments, but throughout the neighbourhood, where his
learning and notably his knowledge of the Scriptures was held in the most
profound awe and respect. With one hand buried in the capacious pockets of his
corduroys underneath his elaborately-worked, well-worn smock, the other holding
his long clay pipe, Mr. Hempseed sat there looking dejectedly across the room
at the rivulets of moisture which trickled down the window panes.

“No,” replied Mr. Jellyband, sententiously, “I dunno, Mr.
’Empseed, as I ever did. An’ I’ve been in these parts nigh on
sixty years.”

“Aye! you wouldn’t rec’llect the first three years of them
sixty, Mr. Jellyband,” quietly interposed Mr. Hempseed. “I dunno as
I ever see’d an infant take much note of the weather, leastways not in
these parts, an’ I’ve lived ’ere nigh on seventy-five
years, Mr. Jellyband.”

The superiority of this wisdom was so incontestable that for the moment Mr.
Jellyband was not ready with his usual flow of argument.

“It do seem more like April than September, don’t it?”
continued Mr. Hempseed, dolefully, as a shower of raindrops fell with a sizzle
upon the fire.

“Aye! that it do,” assented the worthy host, “but then what
can you ’xpect, Mr. ’Empseed, I says, with sich a government as
we’ve got?”

Mr. Hempseed shook his head with an infinity of wisdom, tempered by
deeply-rooted mistrust of the British climate and the British Government.

“I don’t ’xpect nothing, Mr. Jellyband,” he said.
“Pore folks like us is of no account up there in Lunnon, I knows that,
and it’s not often as I do complain. But when it comes to sich wet
weather in September, and all me fruit a-rottin’ and a-dyin’ like
the ’Guptian mother’s first-born, and doin’ no more good than
they did, pore dears, save to a lot of Jews, pedlars and sich, with their
oranges and sich like foreign ungodly fruit, which nobody’d buy if
English apples and pears was nicely swelled. As the Scriptures
say—”

“That’s quite right, Mr. ’Empseed,” retorted Jellyband,
“and as I says, what can you ’xpect? There’s all them Frenchy
devils over the Channel yonder a-murderin’ their king and nobility, and
Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox and Mr. Burke a-fightin’ and a-wranglin’
between them, if we Englishmen should ’low them to go on in their ungodly
way. ‘Let ’em murder!’ says Mr. Pitt. ‘Stop
’em!’ says Mr. Burke.”

“And let ’em murder, says I, and be demmed to ’em,”
said Mr. Hempseed, emphatically, for he had but little liking for his friend
Jellyband’s political arguments, wherein he always got out of his depth,
and had but little chance for displaying those pearls of wisdom which had
earned for him so high a reputation in the neighbourhood and so many free
tankards of ale at “The Fisherman’s Rest.”

“Let ’em murder,” he repeated again, “but don’t
let’s ’ave sich rain in September, for that is agin the law and the
Scriptures which says—”

“Lud! Mr. ’Arry, ’ow you made me jump!”

It was unfortunate for Sally and her flirtation that this remark of hers should
have occurred at the precise moment when Mr. Hempseed was collecting his
breath, in order to deliver himself of one of those Scriptural utterances which
had made him famous, for it brought down upon her pretty head the full flood of
her father’s wrath.

“Now then, Sally, me girl, now then!” he said, trying to force a
frown upon his good-humoured face, “stop that fooling with them young
jackanapes and get on with the work.”

“The work’s gettin’ on all ri’, father.”

But Mr. Jellyband was peremptory. He had other views for his buxom daughter,
his only child, who would in God’s good time become the owner of
“The Fisherman’s Rest,” than to see her married to one of
these young fellows who earned but a precarious livelihood with their net.

“Did ye hear me speak, me girl?” he said in that quiet tone, which
no one inside the inn dared to disobey. “Get on with my Lord Tony’s
supper, for, if it ain’t the best we can do, and ’e not satisfied,
see what you’ll get, that’s all.”

Reluctantly Sally obeyed.

“Is you ’xpecting special guests then to-night, Mr.
Jellyband?” asked Jimmy Pitkin, in a loyal attempt to divert his
host’s attention from the circumstances connected with Sally’s exit
from the room.

“Aye! that I be,” replied Jellyband, “friends of my Lord Tony
hisself. Dukes and duchesses from over the water yonder, whom the young lord
and his friend, Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, and other young noblemen have helped out
of the clutches of them murderin’ devils.”

But this was too much for Mr. Hempseed’s querulous philosophy.

“Lud!” he said, “what they do that for, I wonder? I
don’t ’old not with interferin’ in other folks’ ways.
As the Scriptures say—”

“Maybe, Mr. ’Empseed,” interrupted Jellyband, with biting
sarcasm, “as you’re a personal friend of Mr. Pitt, and as you says
along with Mr. Fox: ‘Let ’em murder!’ says you.”

“Pardon me, Mr. Jellyband,” feebly protested Mr. Hempseed, “I
dunno as I ever did.”

But Mr. Jellyband had at last succeeded in getting upon his favourite
hobby-horse, and had no intention of dismounting in any hurry.

“Or maybe you’ve made friends with some of them French chaps
’oo they do say have come over here o’ purpose to make us
Englishmen agree with their murderin’ ways.”

“I dunno what you mean, Mr. Jellyband,” suggested Mr. Hempseed,
“all I know is—”

“All I know is,” loudly asserted mine host, “that
there was my friend Peppercorn, ’oo owns the ‘Blue-Faced
Boar,’ an’ as true and loyal an Englishman as you’d see in
the land. And now look at ’im!—’E made friends with some
o’ them frog-eaters, ’obnobbed with them just as if they was
Englishmen, and not just a lot of immoral, God-forsaking furrin’ spies.
Well! and what happened? Peppercorn ’e now ups and talks of revolutions,
and liberty, and down with the aristocrats, just like Mr. ’Empseed over
’ere!”

“Pardon me, Mr. Jellyband,” again interposed Mr. Hempseed, feebly,
“I dunno as I ever did—”

Mr. Jellyband had appealed to the company in general, who were listening
awe-struck and open-mouthed at the recital of Mr. Peppercorn’s
defalcations. At one table two customers—gentlemen apparently by their
clothes—had pushed aside their half-finished game of dominoes, and had
been listening for some time, and evidently with much amusement at Mr.
Jellyband’s international opinions. One of them now, with a quiet,
sarcastic smile still lurking round the corners of his mobile mouth, turned
towards the centre of the room where Mr. Jellyband was standing.

“You seem to think, mine honest friend,” he said quietly,
“that these Frenchmen—spies I think you called them—are
mighty clever fellows to have made mincemeat so to speak of your friend Mr.
Peppercorn’s opinions. How did they accomplish that now, think
you?”

“Lud! sir, I suppose they talked ’im over. Those Frenchies,
I’ve ’eard it said, ’ave got the gift of gab—and Mr.
’Empseed ’ere will tell you ’ow it is that they just twist
some people round their little finger like.”

“Indeed, and is that so, Mr. Hempseed?” inquired the stranger
politely.

“Nay, sir!” replied Mr. Hempseed, much irritated, “I dunno as
I can give you the information you require.”

“Faith, then,” said the stranger, “let us hope, my worthy
host, that these clever spies will not succeed in upsetting your extremely
loyal opinions.”

But this was too much for Mr. Jellyband’s pleasant equanimity. He burst
into an uproarious fit of laughter, which was soon echoed by those who happened
to be in his debt.

“Hahaha! hohoho! hehehe!” He laughed in every key, did my worthy
host, and laughed until his sides ached, and his eyes streamed. “At me!
hark at that! Did ye ’ear ’im say that they’d be
upsettin’ my opinions?—Eh?—Lud love you, sir, but you do say
some queer things.”

“Well, Mr. Jellyband,” said Mr. Hempseed, sententiously, “you
know what the Scriptures say: ‘Let ’im ’oo stands take
’eed lest ’e fall.’”

“But then hark’ee, Mr. ’Empseed,” retorted Jellyband,
still holding his sides with laughter, “the Scriptures didn’t know
me. Why, I wouldn’t so much as drink a glass of ale with one o’
them murderin’ Frenchmen, and nothin’ ’d make me change my
opinions. Why! I’ve ’eard it said that them frog-eaters can’t
even speak the King’s English, so, of course, if any of ’em tried
to speak their God-forsaken lingo to me, why, I should spot them directly,
see!—and forewarned is forearmed, as the saying goes.”

“Aye! my honest friend,” assented the stranger cheerfully, “I
see that you are much too sharp, and a match for any twenty Frenchmen, and
here’s to your very good health, my worthy host, if you’ll do me
the honour to finish this bottle of mine with me.”

“I am sure you’re very polite, sir,” said Mr. Jellyband,
wiping his eyes which were still streaming with the abundance of his laughter,
“and I don’t mind if I do.”

The stranger poured out a couple of tankards full of wine, and having offered
one to mine host, he took the other himself.

“Loyal Englishmen as we all are,” he said, whilst the same humorous
smile played round the corners of his thin lips—“loyal as we are,
we must admit that this at least is one good thing which comes to us from
France.”

“Aye! we’ll none of us deny that, sir,” assented mine host.

“And here’s to the best landlord in England, our worthy host, Mr.
Jellyband,” said the stranger in a loud tone of voice.

“Hip, hip, hurrah!” retorted the whole company present. Then there
was loud clapping of hands, and mugs and tankards made a rattling music upon
the tables to the accompaniment of loud laughter at nothing in particular, and
of Mr. Jellyband’s muttered exclamations:

“Just fancy me bein’ talked over by any God-forsaken
furriner!—What?—Lud love you, sir, but you do say some queer
things.”

To which obvious fact the stranger heartily assented. It was certainly a
preposterous suggestion that anyone could ever upset Mr. Jellyband’s
firmly-rooted opinions anent the utter worthlessness of the inhabitants of the
whole continent of Europe.

CHAPTER III.

THE REFUGEES

Feeling in every part of England certainly ran very high at this time against
the French and their doings. Smugglers and legitimate traders between the
French and English coasts brought snatches of news from over the water, which
made every honest Englishman’s blood boil, and made him long to have
“a good go” at those murderers, who had imprisoned their king and
all his family, subjected the queen and the royal children to every species of
indignity, and were even now loudly demanding the blood of the whole Bourbon
family and of every one of its adherents.

The execution of the Princesse de Lamballe, Marie Antoinette’s young and
charming friend, had filled everyone in England with unspeakable horror, the
daily execution of scores of royalists of good family, whose only sin was their
aristocratic name, seemed to cry for vengeance to the whole of civilised
Europe.

Yet, with all that, no one dared to interfere. Burke had exhausted all his
eloquence in trying to induce the British Government to fight the revolutionary
government of France, but Mr. Pitt, with characteristic prudence, did not feel
that this country was fit yet to embark on another arduous and costly war. It
was for Austria to take the initiative; Austria, whose fairest daughter was
even now a dethroned queen, imprisoned and insulted by a howling mob; and
surely ’twas not—so argued Mr. Fox—for the whole of England
to take up arms, because one set of Frenchmen chose to murder another.

As for Mr. Jellyband and his fellow John Bulls, though they looked upon all
foreigners with withering contempt, they were royalist and anti-revolutionists
to a man, and at this present moment were furious with Pitt for his caution and
moderation, although they naturally understood nothing of the diplomatic
reasons which guided that great man’s policy.

But now Sally came running back, very excited and very eager. The joyous
company in the coffee-room had heard nothing of the noise outside, but she had
spied a dripping horse and rider who had stopped at the door of “The
Fisherman’s Rest,” and while the stable boy ran forward to take
charge of the horse, pretty Miss Sally went to the front door to greet the
welcome visitor.

“I think I see’d my Lord Antony’s
horse out in the yard, father,” she said, as she ran across the
coffee-room.

But already the door had been thrown open from outside, and the next moment an
arm, covered in drab cloth and dripping with the heavy rain, was round pretty
Sally’s waist, while a hearty voice echoed along the polished rafters of
the coffee-room.

“Aye, and bless your brown eyes for being so sharp, my pretty
Sally,” said the man who had just entered, whilst worthy Mr. Jellyband
came bustling forward, eager, alert and fussy, as became the advent of one of
the most favoured guests of his hostel.

“Lud, I protest, Sally,” added Lord Antony, as he deposited a kiss
on Miss Sally’s blooming cheeks, “but you are growing prettier and
prettier every time I see you—and my honest friend, Jellyband here, must
have hard work to keep the fellows off that slim waist of yours. What say you,
Mr. Waite?”

Mr. Waite—torn between his respect for my lord and his dislike of that
particular type of joke—only replied with a doubtful grunt.

Lord Antony Dewhurst, one of the sons of the Duke of Exeter, was in those days
a very perfect type of a young English gentleman—tall, well set-up, broad
of shoulders and merry of face, his laughter rang loudly wherever he went. A
good sportsman, a lively companion, a courteous, well-bred man of the world,
with not too much brains to spoil his temper, he was a universal favourite in
London drawing-rooms or in the coffee-rooms of village inns. At “The
Fisherman’s Rest” everyone knew him—for he was fond of a trip
across to France, and always spent a night under worthy Mr. Jellyband’s
roof on his way there or back.

He nodded to Waite, Pitkin and the others as he at last released Sally’s
waist, and crossed over to the hearth to warm and dry himself: as he did so, he
cast a quick, somewhat suspicious glance at the two strangers, who had quietly
resumed their game of dominoes, and for a moment a look of deep earnestness,
even of anxiety, clouded his jovial young face.

But only for a moment; the next he had turned to Mr. Hempseed, who was
respectfully touching his forelock.

“Well, Mr. Hempseed, and how is the fruit?”

“Badly, my lord, badly,” replied Mr. Hempseed, dolefully,
“but what can you ’xpect with this ’ere government
favourin’ them rascals over in France, who would murder their king and
all their nobility.”

“Odd’s life!” retorted Lord Antony; “so they would,
honest Hempseed,—at least those they can get hold of, worse luck! But we
have got some friends coming here to-night, who at any rate have evaded their
clutches.”

It almost seemed, when the young man said these words, as if he threw a defiant
look towards the quiet strangers in the corner.

“Thanks to you, my lord, and to your friends, so I’ve heard it
said,” said Mr. Jellyband.

But in a moment Lord Antony’s hand fell warningly on mine host’s
arm.

“Hush!” he said peremptorily, and instinctively once again looked
towards the strangers.

“Oh! Lud love you, they are all right, my lord,” retorted
Jellyband; “don’t you be afraid. I wouldn’t have spoken, only
I knew we were among friends. That gentleman over there is as true and loyal a
subject of King George as you are yourself, my lord, saving your presence. He
is but lately arrived in Dover, and is settling down in business in these
parts.”

“In business? Faith, then, it must be as an undertaker, for I vow I never
beheld a more rueful countenance.”

“Nay, my lord, I believe that the gentleman is a widower, which no doubt
would account for the melancholy of his bearing—but he is a friend,
nevertheless, I’ll vouch for that—and you will own, my lord, that
who should judge of a face better than the landlord of a popular
inn—”

“Oh, that’s all right, then, if we are among friends,” said
Lord Antony, who evidently did not care to discuss the subject with his host.
“But, tell me, you have no one else staying here, have you?”

“No one, my lord, and no one coming, either, leastways—”

“Leastways?”

“No one your lordship would object to, I know.”

“Who is it?”

“Well, my lord, Sir Percy Blakeney and his lady will be here presently,
but they ain’t a-goin’ to stay—”

“Lady Blakeney?” queried Lord Antony, in some astonishment.

“Aye, my lord. Sir Percy’s skipper was here just now. He says that
my lady’s brother is crossing over to France to-day in the Day
Dream, which is Sir Percy’s yacht, and Sir Percy and my lady will
come with him as far as here to see the last of him. It don’t put you
out, do it, my lord?”

“No, no, it doesn’t put me out, friend; nothing will put me out,
unless that supper is not the very best which Miss Sally can cook, and which
has ever been served in ‘The Fisherman’s Rest.’”

“You need have no fear of that, my lord,” said Sally, who all this
while had been busy setting the table for supper. And very gay and inviting it
looked, with a large bunch of brilliantly coloured dahlias in the centre, and
the bright pewter goblets and blue china about.

“How many shall I lay for, my lord?”

“Five places, pretty Sally, but let the supper be enough for ten at
least—our friends will be tired, and, I hope, hungry. As for me, I vow I
could demolish a baron of beef to-night.”

“Here they are, I do believe,” said Sally, excitedly, as a distant
clatter of horses and wheels could now be distinctly heard, drawing rapidly
nearer.

There was general commotion in the coffee-room. Everyone was curious to see my
Lord Antony’s swell friends from over the water. Miss Sally cast one or
two quick glances at the little bit of mirror which hung on the wall, and
worthy Mr. Jellyband bustled out in order to give the first welcome himself to
his distinguished guests. Only the two strangers in the corner did not
participate in the general excitement. They were calmly finishing their game of
dominoes, and did not even look once towards the door.

“Straight ahead, Comtesse, the door on your right,” said a pleasant
voice outside.

“Aye! there they are, all right enough,” said Lord Antony,
joyfully; “off with you, my pretty Sally, and see how quickly you can
dish up the soup.”

The door was thrown wide open, and, preceded by Mr. Jellyband, who was profuse
in his bows and welcomes, a party of four—two ladies and two
gentlemen—entered the coffee-room.

“Welcome! Welcome to old England!” said Lord Antony, effusively, as
he came eagerly forward with both hands outstretched towards the newcomers.

“Ah, you are Lord Antony Dewhurst, I think,” said one of the
ladies, speaking with a strong foreign accent.

“At your service, Madame,” he replied, as he ceremoniously kissed
the hands of both the ladies, then turned to the men and shook them both warmly
by the hand.

Sally was already helping the ladies to take off their travelling cloaks, and
both turned, with a shiver, towards the brightly-blazing hearth.

There was a general movement among the company in the coffee-room. Sally had
bustled off to her kitchen, whilst Jellyband, still profuse with his respectful
salutations, arranged one or two chairs around the fire. Mr. Hempseed, touching
his forelock, was quietly vacating the seat in the hearth. Everyone was staring
curiously, yet deferentially, at the foreigners.

“Ah, Messieurs! what can I say?” said the elder of the two ladies,
as she stretched a pair of fine, aristocratic hands to the warmth of the blaze,
and looked with unspeakable gratitude first at Lord Antony, then at one of the
young men who had accompanied her party, and who was busy divesting himself of
his heavy, caped coat.

“Only that you are glad to be in England, Comtesse,” replied Lord
Antony, “and that you have not suffered too much from your trying
voyage.”

“Indeed, indeed, we are glad to be in England,” she said, while her
eyes filled with tears, “and we have already forgotten all that we have
suffered.”

Her voice was musical and low, and there was a great deal of calm dignity and
of many sufferings nobly endured marked in the handsome, aristocratic face,
with its wealth of snow-white hair dressed high above the forehead, after the
fashion of the times.

“I hope my friend, Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, proved an entertaining travelling
companion, Madame?”

“Ah, indeed, Sir Andrew was kindness itself. How could my children and I
ever show enough gratitude to you all, Messieurs?”

Her companion, a dainty, girlish figure, childlike and pathetic in its look of
fatigue and of sorrow, had said nothing as yet, but her eyes, large, brown, and
full of tears, looked up from the fire and sought those of Sir Andrew Ffoulkes,
who had drawn near to the hearth and to her; then, as they met his, which were
fixed with unconcealed admiration upon the sweet face before him, a thought of
warmer colour rushed up to her pale cheeks.

“So this is England,” she said, as she looked round with childlike
curiosity at the great open hearth, the oak rafters, and the yokels with their
elaborate smocks and jovial, rubicund, British countenances.

“A bit of it, Mademoiselle,” replied Sir Andrew, smiling,
“but all of it, at your service.”

The young girl blushed again, but this time a bright smile, fleet and sweet,
illumined her dainty face. She said nothing, and Sir Andrew too was silent, yet
those two young people understood one another, as young people have a way of
doing all the world over, and have done since the world began.

“But, I say, supper!” here broke in Lord Antony’s jovial
voice, “supper, honest Jellyband. Where is that pretty wench of yours and
the dish of soup? Zooks, man, while you stand there gaping at the ladies, they
will faint with hunger.”

“One moment! one moment, my lord,” said Jellyband, as he threw open
the door that led to the kitchen and shouted lustily: “Sally! Hey, Sally
there, are ye ready, my girl?”

Sally was ready, and the next moment she appeared in the doorway carrying a
gigantic tureen, from which rose a cloud of steam and an abundance of savoury
odour.

“Odd’s my life, supper at last!” ejaculated Lord Antony,
merrily, as he gallantly offered his arm to the Comtesse.

“May I have the honour?” he added ceremoniously, as he led her
towards the supper table.

There was general bustle in the coffee-room: Mr. Hempseed and most of the
yokels and fisher-folk had gone to make way for “the quality,” and
to finish smoking their pipes elsewhere. Only the two strangers stayed on,
quietly and unconcernedly playing their game of dominoes and sipping their
wine; whilst at another table Harry Waite, who was fast losing his temper,
watched pretty Sally bustling round the table.

She looked a very dainty picture of English rural life, and no wonder that the
susceptible young Frenchman could scarce take his eyes off her pretty face. The
Vicomte de Tournay was scarce nineteen, a beardless boy, on whom the terrible
tragedies which were being enacted in his own country had made but little
impression. He was elegantly and even foppishly dressed, and once safely landed
in England he was evidently ready to forget the horrors of the Revolution in
the delights of English life.

“Pardi, if zis is England,” he said as he continued to ogle Sally
with marked satisfaction, “I am of it satisfied.”

It would be impossible at this point to record the exact exclamation which
escaped through Mr. Harry Waite’s clenched teeth. Only respect for
“the quality,” and notably for my Lord Antony, kept his marked
disapproval of the young foreigner in check.

“Nay, but this is England, you abandoned young reprobate,”
interposed Lord Antony with a laugh, “and do not, I pray, bring your
loose foreign ways into this most moral country.”

Lord Antony had already sat down at the head of the table with the Comtesse on
his right. Jellyband was bustling round, filling glasses and putting chairs
straight. Sally waited, ready to hand round the soup. Mr. Harry Waite’s
friends had at last succeeded in taking him out of the room, for his temper was
growing more and more violent under the Vicomte’s obvious admiration for
Sally.

“Suzanne,” came in stern, commanding accents from the rigid
Comtesse.

Suzanne blushed again; she had lost count of time and of place whilst she had
stood beside the fire, allowing the handsome young Englishman’s eyes to
dwell upon her sweet face, and his hand, as if unconsciously, to rest upon
hers. Her mother’s voice brought her back to reality once more, and with
a submissive “Yes, Mama,” she too took her place at the supper
table.

CHAPTER IV.

THE LEAGUE OF THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL

They all looked a merry, even a happy party, as they sat round the table; Sir
Andrew Ffoulkes and Lord Antony Dewhurst, two typical good-looking, well-born
and well-bred Englishmen of that year of grace 1792, and the aristocratic
French comtesse with her two children, who had just escaped from such dire
perils, and found a safe retreat at last on the shores of protecting England.

In the corner the two strangers had apparently finished their game; one of them
arose, and standing with his back to the merry company at the table, he
adjusted with much deliberation his large triple caped coat. As he did so, he
gave one quick glance all around him. Everyone was busy laughing and chatting,
and he murmured the words “All safe!”: his companion then, with the
alertness borne of long practice, slipped on to his knees in a moment, and the
next had crept noiselessly under the oak bench. The stranger then, with a loud
“Good-night,” quietly walked out of the coffee-room.

Not one of those at the supper table had noticed this curious and silent
manœuvre, but when the stranger finally closed the door of the coffee-room
behind him, they all instinctively sighed a sigh of relief.

“Alone, at last!” said Lord Antony, jovially.

Then the young Vicomte de Tournay rose, glass in hand, and with the graceful
affectation peculiar to the times, he raised it aloft, and said in broken
English,—

“To His Majesty George Three of England. God bless him for his
hospitality to us all, poor exiles from France.”

“His Majesty the King!” echoed Lord Antony and Sir Andrew as they
drank loyally to the toast.

“To His Majesty King Louis of France,” added Sir Andrew, with
solemnity. “May God protect him, and give him victory over his
enemies.”

Everyone rose and drank this toast in silence. The fate of the unfortunate King
of France, then a prisoner of his own people, seemed to cast a gloom even over
Mr. Jellyband’s pleasant countenance.

“And to M. le Comte de Tournay de Basserive,” said Lord Antony,
merrily. “May we welcome him in England before many days are over.”

“Ah, Monsieur,” said the Comtesse, as with a slightly trembling
hand she conveyed her glass to her lips, “I scarcely dare to hope.”

But already Lord Antony had served out the soup, and for the next few moments
all conversation ceased, while Jellyband and Sally handed round the plates and
everyone began to eat.

“Faith, Madame!” said Lord Antony, after a while, “mine was
no idle toast; seeing yourself, Mademoiselle Suzanne and my friend the Vicomte
safely in England now, surely you must feel reassured as to the fate of
Monsieur le Comte.”

“Ah, Monsieur,” replied the Comtesse, with a heavy sigh, “I
trust in God—I can but pray—and hope . . .”

“Aye, Madame!” here interposed Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, “trust in
God by all means, but believe also a little in your English friends, who have
sworn to bring the Count safely across the Channel, even as they have brought
you to-day.”

“Indeed, indeed, Monsieur,” she replied, “I have the fullest
confidence in you and in your friends. Your fame, I assure you, has spread
throughout the whole of France. The way some of my own friends have escaped
from the clutches of that awful revolutionary tribunal was nothing short of a
miracle—and all done by you and your friends—”

“We were but the hands, Madame la Comtesse . . .”

“But my husband, Monsieur,” said the Comtesse, whilst unshed tears
seemed to veil her voice, “he is in such deadly peril—I would never
have left him, only . . . there were my children . . . I was torn between my
duty to him, and to them. They refused to go without me . . . and you and your
friends assured me so solemnly that my husband would be safe. But, oh! now that
I am here—amongst you all—in this beautiful, free England—I
think of him, flying for his life, hunted like a poor beast . . . in such
peril. . . . Ah! I should not have left him . . . I should not have left him! .
. .”

The poor woman had completely broken down; fatigue, sorrow and emotion had
overmastered her rigid, aristocratic bearing. She was crying gently to herself,
whilst Suzanne ran up to her and tried to kiss away her tears.

Lord Antony and Sir Andrew had said nothing to interrupt the Comtesse whilst
she was speaking. There was no doubt that they felt deeply for her; their very
silence testified to that—but in every century, and ever since England
has been what it is, an Englishman has always felt somewhat ashamed of his own
emotion and of his own sympathy. And so the two young men said nothing, and
busied themselves in trying to hide their feelings, only succeeding in looking
immeasurably sheepish.

“As for me, Monsieur,” said Suzanne, suddenly, as she looked
through a wealth of brown curls across at Sir Andrew, “I trust you
absolutely, and I know that you will bring my dear father safely to
England, just as you brought us to-day.”

This was said with so much confidence, such unuttered hope and belief, that it
seemed as if by magic to dry the mother’s eyes, and to bring a smile upon
everybody’s lips.

“Nay! you shame me, Mademoiselle,” replied Sir Andrew;
“though my life is at your service, I have been but a humble tool in the
hands of our great leader, who organised and effected your escape.”

He had spoken with so much warmth and vehemence that Suzanne’s eyes
fastened upon him in undisguised wonder.

“Your leader, Monsieur?” said the Comtesse, eagerly. “Ah! of
course, you must have a leader. And I did not think of that before! But tell me
where is he? I must go to him at once, and I and my children must throw
ourselves at his feet, and thank him for all that he has done for us.”

“Alas, Madame!” said Lord Antony, “that is impossible.”

“Impossible?—Why?”

“Because the Scarlet Pimpernel works in the dark, and his identity is
only known under a solemn oath of secrecy to his immediate followers.”

“The Scarlet Pimpernel?” said Suzanne, with a merry laugh.
“Why! what a droll name! What is the Scarlet Pimpernel, Monsieur?”

She looked at Sir Andrew with eager curiosity. The young man’s face had
become almost transfigured. His eyes shone with enthusiasm; hero-worship, love,
admiration for his leader seemed literally to glow upon his face.

“The Scarlet Pimpernel, Mademoiselle,” he said at last,
“is the name of a humble English wayside flower; but it is also the name
chosen to hide the identity of the best and bravest man in all the world, so
that he may better succeed in accomplishing the noble task he has set himself
to do.”

“Ah, yes,” here interposed the young Vicomte, “I have heard
speak of this Scarlet Pimpernel. A little flower—red?—yes! They say
in Paris that every time a royalist escapes to England that devil,
Foucquier-Tinville, the Public Prosecutor, receives a paper with that little
flower dessinated in red upon it. . . . Yes?”

“Yes, that is so,” assented Lord Antony.

“Then he will have received one such paper to-day?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Oh! I wonder what he will say!” said Suzanne, merrily. “I
have heard that the picture of that little red flower is the only thing that
frightens him.”

“Faith, then,” said Sir Andrew, “he will have many more
opportunities of studying the shape of that small scarlet flower.”

“Ah! Monsieur,” sighed the Comtesse, “it all sounds like a
romance, and I cannot understand it all.”

“Why should you try, Madame?”

“But, tell me, why should your leader—why should you
all—spend your money and risk your lives—for it is your lives you
risk, Messieurs, when you set foot in France—and all for us French men
and women, who are nothing to you?”

“Sport, Madame la Comtesse, sport,” asserted Lord Antony, with his
jovial, loud and pleasant voice; “we are a nation of sportsmen, you know,
and just now it is the fashion to pull the hare from between the teeth of the
hound.”

“Ah, no, no, not sport only, Monsieur . . . you have a more noble motive,
I am sure, for the good work you do.”

“Faith, Madame, I would like you to find it then . . . as for me, I vow,
I love the game, for this is the finest sport I have yet
encountered.—Hair-breadth escapes . . . the devil’s own
risks!—Tally ho!—and away we go!”

But the Comtesse shook her head, still incredulously. To her it seemed
preposterous that these young men and their great leader, all of them rich,
probably well-born, and young, should for no other motive than sport, run the
terrible risks, which she knew they were constantly doing. Their nationality,
once they had set foot in France, would be no safeguard to them. Anyone found
harbouring or assisting suspected royalists would be ruthlessly condemned and
summarily executed, whatever his nationality might be. And this band of young
Englishmen had, to her own knowledge, bearded the implacable and bloodthirsty
tribunal of the Revolution, within the very walls of Paris itself, and had
snatched away condemned victims, almost from the very foot of the guillotine.
With a shudder, she recalled the events of the last few days, her escape from
Paris with her two children, all three of them hidden beneath the hood of a
rickety cart, and lying amidst a heap of turnips and cabbages, not daring to
breathe, whilst the mob howled “À la lanterne les aristos!” at that
awful West Barricade.

It had all occurred in such a miraculous way; she and her husband had
understood that they had been placed on the list of “suspected
persons,” which meant that their trial and death were but a matter of
days—of hours, perhaps.

Then came the hope of salvation; the mysterious epistle, signed with the
enigmatical scarlet device; the clear, peremptory directions; the parting from
the Comte de Tournay, which had torn the poor wife’s heart in two; the
hope of reunion; the flight with her two children; the covered cart; that awful
hag driving it, who looked like some horrible evil demon, with the ghastly
trophy on her whip handle!

The Comtesse looked round at the quaint, old-fashioned English inn, the peace
of this land of civil and religious liberty, and she closed her eyes to shut
out the haunting vision of that West Barricade, and of the mob retreating
panic-stricken when the old hag spoke of the plague.

Every moment under that cart she expected recognition, arrest, herself and her
children tried and condemned, and these young Englishmen, under the guidance of
their brave and mysterious leader, had risked their lives to save them all, as
they had already saved scores of other innocent people.

And all only for sport? Impossible! Suzanne’s eyes as she sought those of
Sir Andrew plainly told him that she thought that he at any rate rescued
his fellow-men from terrible and unmerited death, through a higher and nobler
motive than his friend would have her believe.

“How many are there in your brave league, Monsieur?” she asked
timidly.

“Twenty all told, Mademoiselle,” he replied, “one to command,
and nineteen to obey. All of us Englishmen, and all pledged to the same
cause—to obey our leader and to rescue the innocent.”

“May God protect you all, Messieurs,” said the Comtesse, fervently.

“He has done that so far, Madame.”

“It is wonderful to me, wonderful!—That you should all be so brave,
so devoted to your fellow-men—yet you are English!—and in France
treachery is rife—all in the name of liberty and fraternity.”

“The women even, in France, have been more bitter against us aristocrats
than the men,” said the Vicomte, with a sigh.

“Ah, yes,” added the Comtesse, whilst a look of haughty disdain and
intense bitterness shot through her melancholy eyes. “There was that
woman, Marguerite St. Just, for instance. She denounced the Marquis de St. Cyr
and all his family to the awful tribunal of the Terror.”

“Marguerite St. Just?” said Lord Antony, as he shot a quick and
apprehensive glance across at Sir Andrew. “Marguerite St.
Just?—Surely . . .”

“Yes!” replied the Comtesse, “surely you know her. She was a
leading actress of the Comédie Française, and she married an Englishman lately.
You must know her—”

“Know her?” said Lord Antony. “Know Lady Blakeney—the
most fashionable woman in London—the wife of the richest man in England?
Of course, we all know Lady Blakeney.”

“She was a school-fellow of mine at the convent in Paris,”
interposed Suzanne, “and we came over to England together to learn your
language. I was very fond of Marguerite, and I cannot believe that she ever did
anything so wicked.”

“It certainly seems incredible,” said Sir Andrew. “You say
that she actually denounced the Marquis de St. Cyr? Why should she have done
such a thing? Surely there must be some mistake—”

“No mistake is possible, Monsieur,” rejoined the Comtesse, coldly.
“Marguerite St. Just’s brother is a noted republican. There was
some talk of a family feud between him and my cousin, the Marquis de St. Cyr.
The St. Justs’ are quite plebeian, and the republican government employs
many spies. I assure you there is no mistake. . . . You had not heard this
story?”

“Faith, Madame, I did hear some vague rumours of it, but in England no
one would credit it. . . . Sir Percy Blakeney, her husband, is a very wealthy
man, of high social position, the intimate friend of the Prince of Wales . . .
and Lady Blakeney leads both fashion and society in London.”

“That may be, Monsieur, and we shall, of course, lead a very quiet life
in England, but I pray God that while I remain in this beautiful country, I may
never meet Marguerite St. Just.”

The proverbial wet-blanket seemed to have fallen over the merry little company
gathered round the table. Suzanne looked sad and silent; Sir Andrew fidgeted
uneasily with his fork, whilst the Comtesse, encased in the plate-armour of her
aristocratic prejudices, sat, rigid and unbending, in her straight-backed
chair. As for Lord Antony, he looked extremely uncomfortable, and glanced once
or twice apprehensively towards Jellyband, who looked just as uncomfortable as
himself.

“At what time do you expect Sir Percy and Lady Blakeney?” he
contrived to whisper unobserved, to mine host.

“Any moment, my lord,” whispered Jellyband in reply.

Even as he spoke, a distant clatter was heard of an approaching coach; louder
and louder it grew, one or two shouts became distinguishable, then the rattle
of horses’ hoofs on the uneven cobble stones, and the next moment a
stable boy had thrown open the coffee-room door and rushed in excitedly.

“Sir Percy Blakeney and my lady,” he shouted at the top of his
voice, “they’re just arriving.”

And with more shouting, jingling of harness, and iron hoofs upon the stones, a
magnificent coach, drawn by four superb bays, had halted outside the porch of
“The Fisherman’s Rest.”

CHAPTER V.

MARGUERITE

In a moment the pleasant oak-raftered coffee-room of the inn became the scene
of hopeless confusion and discomfort. At the first announcement made by the
stable boy, Lord Antony, with a fashionable oath, had jumped up from his seat
and was now giving many and confused directions to poor bewildered Jellyband,
who seemed at his wits’ end what to do.

“For goodness’ sake, man,” admonished his lordship,
“try to keep Lady Blakeney talking outside for a moment, while the ladies
withdraw. Zounds!” he added, with another more emphatic oath, “this
is most unfortunate.”

“Quick, Sally! the candles!” shouted Jellyband, as hopping about
from one leg to another, he ran hither and thither, adding to the general
discomfort of everybody.

The Comtesse, too, had risen to her feet: rigid and erect, trying to hide her
excitement beneath more becoming sang-froid, she repeated
mechanically,—

“I will not see her!—I will not see her!”

Outside, the excitement attendant upon the arrival of very important guests
grew apace.

“Good-day, Sir Percy!—Good-day to your ladyship! Your servant, Sir
Percy!”—was heard in one long, continued chorus, with alternate
more feeble tones of—“Remember the poor blind man! of your charity,
lady and gentleman!”

Then suddenly a singularly sweet voice was heard through all the din.

“Let the poor man be—and give him some supper at my expense.”

The voice was low and musical, with a slight sing-song in it, and a faint
soupçon of foreign intonation in the pronunciation of the consonants.

Everyone in the coffee-room heard it and paused, instinctively listening to it
for a moment. Sally was holding the candles by the opposite door, which led to
the bedrooms upstairs, and the Comtesse was in the act of beating a hasty
retreat before that enemy who owned such a sweet musical voice; Suzanne
reluctantly was preparing to follow her mother, whilst casting regretful
glances towards the door, where she hoped still to see her dearly-beloved,
erstwhile school-fellow.

Then Jellyband threw open the door, still stupidly and blindly hoping to avert
the catastrophe which he felt was in the air, and the same low, musical voice
said, with a merry laugh and mock consternation,—

“B-r-r-r-r! I am as wet as a herring! Dieu! has anyone ever seen
such a contemptible climate?”

“Suzanne, come with me at once—I wish it,” said the Comtesse,
peremptorily.

“Oh! Mama!” pleaded Suzanne.

“My lady . . . er . . . h’m! . . . my lady! . . .” came in
feeble accents from Jellyband, who stood clumsily trying to bar the way.

“Pardieu, my good man,” said Lady Blakeney, with some
impatience, “what are you standing in my way for, dancing about like a
turkey with a sore foot? Let me get to the fire, I am perished with the
cold.”

And the next moment Lady Blakeney, gently pushing mine host on one side, had
swept into the coffee-room.

There are many portraits and miniatures extant of Marguerite St.
Just—Lady Blakeney as she was then—but it is doubtful if any of
these really do her singular beauty justice. Tall, above the average, with
magnificent presence and regal figure, it is small wonder that even the
Comtesse paused for a moment in involuntary admiration before turning her back
on so fascinating an apparition.

Marguerite Blakeney was then scarcely five-and-twenty, and her beauty was at
its most dazzling stage. The large hat, with its undulating and waving plumes,
threw a soft shadow across the classic brow with the aureole of auburn
hair—free at the moment from any powder; the sweet, almost childlike
mouth, the straight chiselled nose, round chin, and delicate throat, all seemed
set off by the picturesque costume of the period. The rich blue velvet robe
moulded in its every line the graceful contour of the figure, whilst one tiny
hand held, with a dignity all its own, the tall stick adorned with a large
bunch of ribbons which fashionable ladies of the period had taken to carrying
recently.

With a quick glance all around the room, Marguerite Blakeney had taken stock of
everyone there. She nodded pleasantly to Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, whilst extending
a hand to Lord Antony.

“Hello! my Lord Tony, why—what are you doing here in
Dover?” she said merrily.

Then, without waiting for a reply, she turned and faced the Comtesse and
Suzanne. Her whole face lighted up with additional brightness, as she stretched
out both arms towards the young girl.

“Why! if that isn’t my little Suzanne over there. Pardieu,
little citizeness, how came you to be in England? And Madame too!”

She went up effusively to them both, with not a single touch of embarrassment
in her manner or in her smile. Lord Tony and Sir Andrew watched the little
scene with eager apprehension. English though they were, they had often been in
France, and had mixed sufficiently with the French to realise the unbending
hauteur, the bitter hatred with which the old noblesse of France viewed
all those who had helped to contribute to their downfall. Armand St. Just, the
brother of beautiful Lady Blakeney—though known to hold moderate and
conciliatory views—was an ardent republican; his feud with the ancient
family of St. Cyr—the rights and wrongs of which no outsider ever
knew—had culminated in the downfall, the almost total extinction, of the
latter. In France, St. Just and his party had triumphed, and here in England,
face to face with these three refugees driven from their country, flying for
their lives, bereft of all which centuries of luxury had given them, there
stood a fair scion of those same republican families which had hurled down a
throne, and uprooted an aristocracy whose origin was lost in the dim and
distant vista of bygone centuries.

She stood there before them, in all the unconscious insolence of beauty, and
stretched out her dainty hand to them, as if she would, by that one act, bridge
over the conflict and bloodshed of the past decade.

“Suzanne, I forbid you to speak to that woman,” said the Comtesse,
sternly, as she placed a restraining hand upon her daughter’s arm.

She had spoken in English, so that all might hear and understand; the two young
English gentlemen as well as the common innkeeper and his daughter. The latter
literally gasped with horror at this foreign insolence, this impudence before
her ladyship—who was English, now that she was Sir Percy’s wife,
and a friend of the Princess of Wales to boot.

As for Lord Antony and Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, their very hearts seemed to stand
still with horror at this gratuitous insult. One of them uttered an exclamation
of appeal, the other one of warning, and instinctively both glanced hurriedly
towards the door, whence a slow, drawly, not unpleasant voice had already been
heard.

Alone among those present Marguerite Blakeney and the Comtesse de Tournay had
remained seemingly unmoved. The latter, rigid, erect and defiant, with one hand
still upon her daughter’s arm, seemed the very personification of
unbending pride. For the moment Marguerite’s sweet face had become as
white as the soft fichu which swathed her throat, and a very keen observer
might have noted that the hand which held the tall, beribboned stick was
clenched, and trembled somewhat.

But this was only momentary; the next instant the delicate eyebrows were raised
slightly, the lips curved sarcastically upwards, the clear blue eyes looked
straight at the rigid Comtesse, and with a slight shrug of the shoulders—

“Hoity-toity, citizeness,” she said gaily, “what fly stings
you, pray?”

“We are in England now, Madame,” rejoined the Comtesse, coldly,
“and I am at liberty to forbid my daughter to touch your hand in
friendship. Come, Suzanne.”

She beckoned to her daughter, and without another look at Marguerite Blakeney,
but with a deep, old-fashioned curtsey to the two young men, she sailed
majestically out of the room.

There was silence in the old inn parlour for a moment, as the rustle of the
Comtesse’s skirts died away down the passage. Marguerite, rigid as a
statue, followed with hard, set eyes the upright figure, as it disappeared
through the doorway—but as little Suzanne, humble and obedient, was about
to follow her mother, the hard, set expression suddenly vanished, and a
wistful, almost pathetic and childlike look stole into Lady Blakeney’s
eyes.

Little Suzanne caught that look; the child’s sweet nature went out to the
beautiful woman, scarce older than herself; filial obedience vanished before
girlish sympathy; at the door she turned, ran back to Marguerite, and putting
her arms round her, kissed her effusively; then only did she follow her mother,
Sally bringing up the rear, with a pleasant smile on her dimpled face, and with
a final curtsey to my lady.

Suzanne’s sweet and dainty impulse had relieved the unpleasant tension.
Sir Andrew’s eyes followed the pretty little figure, until it had quite
disappeared, then they met Lady Blakeney’s with unassumed merriment.

Marguerite, with dainty affectation, had kissed her hand to the ladies, as they
disappeared through the door, then a humorous smile began hovering round the
corners of her mouth.

“So that’s it, is it?” she said gaily. “La! Sir Andrew,
did you ever see such an unpleasant person? I hope when I grow old I
sha’n’t look like that.”

She gathered up her skirts, and assuming a majestic gait, stalked towards the
fireplace.

“Suzanne,” she said, mimicking the Comtesse’s voice, “I
forbid you to speak to that woman!”

The laugh which accompanied this sally sounded perhaps a trifle forced and
hard, but neither Sir Andrew nor Lord Tony were very keen observers. The
mimicry was so perfect, the tone of the voice so accurately reproduced, that
both the young men joined in a hearty cheerful “Bravo!”

“Ah! Lady Blakeney!” added Lord Tony, “how they must miss you
at the Comédie Française, and how the Parisians must hate Sir Percy for having
taken you away.”

“Lud, man,” rejoined Marguerite, with a shrug of her graceful
shoulders, “’tis impossible to hate Sir Percy for anything; his
witty sallies would disarm even Madame la Comtesse herself.”

The young Vicomte, who had not elected to follow his mother in her dignified
exit, now made a step forward, ready to champion the Comtesse should Lady
Blakeney aim any further shafts at her. But before he could utter a preliminary
word of protest, a pleasant, though distinctly inane laugh, was heard from
outside, and the next moment an unusually tall and very richly dressed figure
appeared in the doorway.

CHAPTER VI.

AN EXQUISITE OF ’92

Sir Percy Blakeney, as the chronicles of the time inform us, was in this year
of grace 1792, still a year or two on the right side of thirty. Tall, above the
average, even for an Englishman, broad-shouldered and massively built, he would
have been called unusually good-looking, but for a certain lazy expression in
his deep-set blue eyes, and that perpetual inane laugh which seemed to
disfigure his strong, clearly-cut mouth.

It was nearly a year ago now that Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart., one of the richest
men in England, leader of all the fashions, and intimate friend of the Prince
of Wales, had astonished fashionable society in London and Bath by bringing
home, from one of his journeys abroad, a beautiful, fascinating, clever, French
wife. He, the sleepiest, dullest, most British Britisher that had ever set a
pretty woman yawning, had secured a brilliant matrimonial prize for which, as
all chroniclers aver, there had been many competitors.

Marguerite St. Just had first made her début in artistic Parisian
circles, at the very moment when the greatest social upheaval the world has
ever known was taking place within its very walls. Scarcely eighteen, lavishly
gifted with beauty and talent, chaperoned only by a young and devoted brother,
she had soon gathered round her, in her charming apartment in the Rue
Richelieu, a coterie which was as brilliant as it was
exclusive—exclusive, that is to say, only from one point of view:
Marguerite St. Just was from principle and by conviction a
republican—equality of birth was her motto—inequality of fortune
was in her eyes a mere untoward accident, but the only inequality she admitted
was that of talent. “Money and titles may be hereditary,” she would
say, “but brains are not,” and thus her charming salon was reserved
for originality and intellect, for brilliance and wit, for clever men and
talented women, and the entrance into it was soon looked upon in the world of
intellect—which even in those days and in those troublous times found its
pivot in Paris—as the seal to an artistic career.

Clever men, distinguished men, and even men of exalted station formed a
perpetual and brilliant court round the fascinating young actress of the
Comédie Française, and she glided through republican, revolutionary,
bloodthirsty Paris like a shining comet with a trail behind her of all that was
most distinguished, most interesting, in intellectual Europe.

Then the climax came. Some smiled indulgently and called it an artistic
eccentricity, others looked upon it as a wise provision, in view of the many
events which were crowding thick and fast in Paris just then, but to all, the
real motive of that climax remained a puzzle and a mystery. Anyway, Marguerite
St. Just married Sir Percy Blakeney one fine day, just like that, without any
warning to her friends, without a soirée de contrat or dîner de
fiançailles or other appurtenances of a fashionable French wedding.

How that stupid, dull Englishman ever came to be admitted within the
intellectual circle which revolved round “the cleverest woman in
Europe,” as her friends unanimously called her, no one ventured to
guess—a golden key is said to open every door, asserted the more
malignantly inclined.

Enough, she married him, and “the cleverest woman in Europe” had
linked her fate to that “demmed idiot” Blakeney, and not even her
most intimate friends could assign to this strange step any other motive than
that of supreme eccentricity. Those friends who knew, laughed to scorn the idea
that Marguerite St. Just had married a fool for the sake of the worldly
advantages with which he might endow her. They knew, as a matter of fact, that
Marguerite St. Just cared nothing about money, and still less about a title;
moreover, there were at least half a dozen other men in the cosmopolitan world
equally well-born, if not so wealthy as Blakeney, who would have been only too
happy to give Marguerite St. Just any position she might choose to covet.

As for Sir Percy himself, he was universally voted to be totally unqualified
for the onerous post he had taken upon himself. His chief qualifications for it
seemed to consist in his blind adoration for her, his great wealth, and the
high favour in which he stood at the English court; but London society thought
that, taking into consideration his own intellectual limitations, it would have
been wiser on his part had he bestowed those worldly advantages upon a less
brilliant and witty wife.

Although lately he had been so prominent a figure in fashionable English
society, he had spent most of his early life abroad. His father, the late Sir
Algernon Blakeney, had had the terrible misfortune of seeing an idolized young
wife become hopelessly insane after two years of happy married life. Percy had
just been born when the late Lady Blakeney fell a prey to the terrible malady
which in those days was looked upon as hopelessly incurable and nothing short
of a curse of God upon the entire family. Sir Algernon took his afflicted young
wife abroad, and there presumably Percy was educated, and grew up between an
imbecile mother and a distracted father, until he attained his majority. The
death of his parents following close upon one another left him a free man, and
as Sir Algernon had led a forcibly simple and retired life, the large Blakeney
fortune had increased tenfold.

Sir Percy Blakeney had travelled a great deal abroad, before he brought home
his beautiful, young, French wife. The fashionable circles of the time were
ready to receive them both with open arms. Sir Percy was rich, his wife was
accomplished, the Prince of Wales took a very great liking to them both. Within
six months they were the acknowledged leaders of fashion and of style. Sir
Percy’s coats were the talk of the town, his inanities were quoted, his
foolish laugh copied by the gilded youth at Almack’s or the Mall.
Everyone knew that he was hopelessly stupid, but then that was scarcely to be
wondered at, seeing that all the Blakeneys, for generations, had been
notoriously dull, and that his mother had died an imbecile.

Thus society accepted him, petted him, made much of him, since his horses were
the finest in the country, his fêtes and wines the most sought after. As
for his marriage with “the cleverest woman in Europe,” well! the
inevitable came with sure and rapid footsteps. No one pitied him, since his
fate was of his own making. There were plenty of young ladies in England, of
high birth and good looks, who would have been quite willing to help him to
spend the Blakeney fortune, whilst smiling indulgently at his inanities and his
good-humoured foolishness. Moreover, Sir Percy got no pity, because he seemed
to require none—he seemed very proud of his clever wife, and to care
little that she took no pains to disguise that good-natured contempt which she
evidently felt for him, and that she even amused herself by sharpening her
ready wits at his expense.

But then Blakeney was really too stupid to notice the ridicule with which his
clever wife covered him, and if his matrimonial relations with the fascinating
Parisienne had not turned out all that his hopes and his dog-like devotion for
her had pictured, society could never do more than vaguely guess at it.

In his beautiful house at Richmond he played second fiddle to his clever wife
with imperturbable bonhomie; he lavished jewels and luxuries of all
kinds upon her, which she took with inimitable grace, dispensing the
hospitality of his superb mansion with the same graciousness with which she had
welcomed the intellectual coterie of Paris.

Physically, Sir Percy Blakeney was undeniably handsome—always excepting
the lazy, bored look which was habitual to him. He was always irreproachably
dressed, and wore the exaggerated “Incroyable” fashions, which had
just crept across from Paris to England, with the perfect good taste innate in
an English gentleman. On this special afternoon in September, in spite of the
long journey by coach, in spite of rain and mud, his coat set irreproachably
across his fine shoulders, his hands looked almost femininely white, as they
emerged through billowy frills of finest Mechlin lace: the extravagantly
short-waisted satin coat, wide-lapelled waistcoat, and tight-fitting striped
breeches, set off his massive figure to perfection, and in repose one might
have admired so fine a specimen of English manhood, until the foppish ways, the
affected movements, the perpetual inane laugh, brought one’s admiration
of Sir Percy Blakeney to an abrupt close.

He had lolled into the old-fashioned inn parlour, shaking the wet off his fine
overcoat; then putting up a gold-rimmed eye-glass to his lazy blue eye, he
surveyed the company, upon whom an embarrassed silence had suddenly fallen.

“How do, Tony? How do, Ffoulkes?” he said, recognising the two
young men and shaking them by the hand. “Zounds, my dear fellow,”
he added, smothering a slight yawn, “did you ever see such a beastly day?
Demmed climate this.”

With a quaint little laugh, half of embarrassment and half of sarcasm,
Marguerite had turned towards her husband, and was surveying him from head to
foot, with an amused little twinkle in her merry blue eyes.

“La!” said Sir Percy, after a moment or two’s silence, as no
one offered any comment, “how sheepish you all look. . . . What’s
up?”

“Oh, nothing, Sir Percy,” replied Marguerite, with a certain amount
of gaiety, which, however, sounded somewhat forced, “nothing to disturb
your equanimity—only an insult to your wife.”

The laugh which accompanied this remark was evidently intended to reassure Sir
Percy as to the gravity of the incident. It apparently succeeded in that, for,
echoing the laugh, he rejoined placidly—

“La, m’dear! you don’t say so. Begad! who was the bold man
who dared to tackle you—eh?”

Lord Tony tried to interpose, but had no time to do so, for the young Vicomte
had already quickly stepped forward.

“Monsieur,” he said, prefixing his little speech with an elaborate
bow, and speaking in broken English, “my mother, the Comtesse de Tournay
de Basserive, has offenced Madame, who, I see, is your wife. I cannot ask your
pardon for my mother; what she does is right in my eyes. But I am ready to
offer you the usual reparation between men of honour.”

The young man drew up his slim stature to its full height and looked very
enthusiastic, very proud, and very hot as he gazed at six foot odd of
gorgeousness, as represented by Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart.

“Lud, Sir Andrew,” said Marguerite, with one of her merry
infectious laughs, “look on that pretty picture—the English turkey
and the French bantam.”

The simile was quite perfect, and the English turkey looked down with complete
bewilderment upon the dainty little French bantam, which hovered quite
threateningly around him.

“La! sir,” said Sir Percy at last, putting up his eye-glass and
surveying the young Frenchman with undisguised wonderment, “where, in the
cuckoo’s name, did you learn to speak English?”

“Monsieur!” protested the Vicomte, somewhat abashed at the way his
warlike attitude had been taken by the ponderous-looking Englishman.

“I protest ’tis marvellous!” continued Sir Percy,
imperturbably, “demmed marvellous! Don’t you think so,
Tony—eh? I vow I can’t speak the French lingo like that.
What?”

“Nay, I’ll vouch for that!” rejoined Marguerite. “Sir
Percy has a British accent you could cut with a knife.”

“Monsieur,” interposed the Vicomte earnestly, and in still more
broken English, “I fear you have not understand. I offer you the only
posseeble reparation among gentlemen.”

“What the devil is that?” asked Sir Percy, blandly.

“My sword, Monsieur,” replied the Vicomte, who, though still
bewildered, was beginning to lose his temper.

“You are a sportsman, Lord Tony,” said Marguerite, merrily;
“ten to one on the little bantam.”

But Sir Percy was staring sleepily at the Vicomte for a moment or two, through
his partly closed heavy lids, then he smothered another yawn, stretched his
long limbs, and turned leisurely away.

“Lud love you, sir,” he muttered good-humouredly. “Demmit,
young man, what’s the good of your sword to me?”

What the Vicomte thought and felt at that moment, when that long-limbed
Englishman treated him with such marked insolence, might fill volumes of sound
reflections. . . . What he said resolved itself into a single articulate word,
for all the others were choked in his throat by his surging wrath—

“A duel, Monsieur,” he stammered.

Once more Blakeney turned, and from his high altitude looked down on the
choleric little man before him; but not even for a second did he seem to lose
his own imperturbable good-humour. He laughed his own pleasant and inane laugh,
and burying his slender, long hands into the capacious pockets of his overcoat,
he said leisurely—

“A duel? La! is that what he meant?
Odd’s fish! you are a bloodthirsty young ruffian. Do you want to make a hole in
a law-abiding man? . . . As for me, sir, I never fight duels,” he added,
as he placidly sat down and stretched his long, lazy legs out before him.
“Demmed uncomfortable things, duels, ain’t they, Tony?”

Now the Vicomte had no doubt vaguely heard that in England the fashion of
duelling amongst gentlemen had been suppressed by the law with a very stern
hand; still to him, a Frenchman, whose notions of bravery and honour were based
upon a code that had centuries of tradition to back it, the spectacle of a
gentleman actually refusing to fight a duel was little short of an enormity. In
his mind he vaguely pondered whether he should strike that long-legged
Englishman in the face and call him a coward, or whether such conduct in a
lady’s presence might be deemed ungentlemanly, when Marguerite happily
interposed.

“I pray you, Lord Tony,” she said in that gentle, sweet, musical
voice of hers, “I pray you play the peacemaker. The child is bursting
with rage, and,” she added with a soupçon of dry sarcasm,
“might do Sir Percy an injury.” She laughed a mocking little laugh,
which, however, did not in the least disturb her husband’s placid
equanimity. “The British turkey has had the day,” she said.
“Sir Percy would provoke all the saints in the calendar and keep his
temper the while.”

But already Blakeney, good-humoured as ever, had joined in the laugh against
himself.

“Demmed smart that now, wasn’t it?” he said, turning
pleasantly to the Vicomte. “Clever woman my wife, sir. . . . You will
find that out if you live long enough in England.”

“Sir Percy is in the right, Vicomte,” here interposed Lord Antony,
laying a friendly hand on the young Frenchman’s shoulder. “It would
hardly be fitting that you should commence your career in England by provoking
him to a duel.”

For a moment longer the Vicomte hesitated, then with a slight shrug of the
shoulders directed against the extraordinary code of honour prevailing in this
fog-ridden island, he said with becoming dignity,—

“Ah, well! if Monsieur is satisfied, I have no griefs. You,
mi’lor’, are our protector. If I have done wrong, I withdraw
myself.”

“Aye, do!” rejoined Blakeney, with a long sigh of satisfaction,
“withdraw yourself over there. Demmed excitable little puppy,” he
added under his breath. “Faith, Ffoulkes, if that’s a specimen of
the goods you and your friends bring over from France, my advice to you is,
drop ’em ’mid Channel, my friend, or I shall have to see old Pitt
about it, get him to clap on a prohibitive tariff, and put you in the stocks an
you smuggle.”

“La, Sir Percy, your chivalry misguides you,” said Marguerite,
coquettishly, “you forget that you yourself have imported one bundle of
goods from France.”

Blakeney slowly rose to his feet, and, making a deep and elaborate bow before
his wife, he said with consummate gallantry,—

“I had the pick of the market, Madame, and my taste is unerring.”

“More so than your chivalry, I fear,” she retorted sarcastically.

“Odd’s life, m’dear! be reasonable! Do you think I am going
to allow my body to be made a pincushion of, by every little frog-eater who
don’t like the shape of your nose?”

“Lud, Sir Percy!” laughed Lady Blakeney as she bobbed him a quaint
and pretty curtsey, “you need not be afraid! ’Tis not the
men who dislike the shape of my nose.”

“Afraid be demmed! Do you impugn my bravery, Madame? I don’t
patronise the ring for nothing, do I, Tony? I’ve put up the fists with
Red Sam before now, and—and he didn’t get it all his own way
either—”

“S’faith, Sir Percy,” said Marguerite, with a long and merry
laugh, that went echoing along the old oak rafters of the parlour, “I
would I had seen you then . . . ha! ha! ha! ha!—you must have looked a
pretty picture . . . and . . . and to be afraid of a little French boy . . .
ha! ha! . . . ha! ha!”

“Ha! ha! ha! he! he! he!” echoed Sir Percy, good-humouredly.
“La, Madame, you honour me! Zooks! Ffoulkes, mark ye that! I have made my
wife laugh!—The cleverest woman in Europe! . . . Odd’s fish, we
must have a bowl on that!” and he tapped vigorously on the table near
him. “Hey! Jelly! Quick, man! Here, Jelly!”

Harmony was once more restored. Mr. Jellyband, with a mighty effort, recovered
himself from the many emotions he had experienced within the last half hour.

“A bowl of punch, Jelly, hot and strong, eh?” said Sir
Percy. “The wits that have just made a clever woman laugh must be
whetted! Ha! ha! ha! Hasten, my good Jelly!”

“Nay, there is no time, Sir Percy,” interposed Marguerite.
“The skipper will be here directly and my brother must get on board, or
the Day Dream will miss the tide.”

“Time, m’dear? There is plenty of time for any gentleman to get
drunk and get on board before the turn of the tide.”

“I think, your ladyship,” said Jellyband, respectfully, “that
the young gentleman is coming along now with Sir Percy’s skipper.”

“That’s right,” said Blakeney, “then Armand can join us
in the merry bowl. Think you, Tony,” he added, turning towards the
Vicomte, “that that jackanapes of yours will join us in a glass? Tell him
that we drink in token of reconciliation.”

“In fact you are all such merry company,” said Marguerite,
“that I trust you will forgive me if I bid my brother good-bye in another
room.”

It would have been bad form to protest. Both Lord Antony and Sir Andrew felt
that Lady Blakeney could not altogether be in tune with them at that moment.
Her love for her brother, Armand St. Just, was deep and touching in the
extreme. He had just spent a few weeks with her in her English home, and was
going back to serve his country, at a moment when death was the usual reward
for the most enduring devotion.

Sir Percy also made no attempt to detain his wife. With that perfect, somewhat
affected gallantry which characterised his every movement, he opened the
coffee-room door for her, and made her the most approved and elaborate bow,
which the fashion of the time dictated, as she sailed out of the room without
bestowing on him more than a passing, slightly contemptuous glance. Only Sir
Andrew Ffoulkes, whose every thought since he had met Suzanne de Tournay seemed
keener, more gentle, more innately sympathetic, noted the curious look of
intense longing, of deep and hopeless passion, with which the inane and
flippant Sir Percy followed the retreating figure of his brilliant wife.

CHAPTER VII.

THE SECRET ORCHARD

Once outside the noisy coffee-room, alone in the dimly-lighted passage,
Marguerite Blakeney seemed to breathe more freely. She heaved a deep sigh, like
one who had long been oppressed with the heavy weight of constant self-control,
and she allowed a few tears to fall unheeded down her cheeks.

Outside the rain had ceased, and through the swiftly passing clouds, the pale
rays of an after-storm sun shone upon the beautiful white coast of Kent and the
quaint, irregular houses that clustered round the Admiralty Pier. Marguerite
Blakeney stepped on to the porch and looked out to sea. Silhouetted against the
ever-changing sky, a graceful schooner, with white sails set, was gently
dancing in the breeze. The Day Dream it was, Sir Percy Blakeney’s
yacht, which was ready to take Armand St. Just back to France into the very
midst of that seething, bloody Revolution which was overthrowing a monarchy,
attacking a religion, destroying a society, in order to try and rebuild upon
the ashes of tradition a new Utopia, of which a few men dreamed, but which none
had the power to establish.

In the distance two figures were approaching “The Fisherman’s
Rest”: one, an oldish man, with a curious fringe of grey hairs round a
rotund and massive chin, and who walked with that peculiar rolling gait which
invariably betrays the seafaring man: the other, a young, slight figure, neatly
and becomingly dressed in a dark, many-caped overcoat; he was clean-shaved, and
his dark hair was taken well back over a clear and noble forehead.

“Armand!” said Marguerite Blakeney, as soon as she saw him
approaching from the distance, and a happy smile shone on her sweet face, even
through the tears.

A minute or two later brother and sister were locked in each other’s
arms, while the old skipper stood respectfully on one side.

“How much time have we got, Briggs?” asked Lady Blakeney,
“before M. St. Just need go on board?”

“We ought to weigh anchor before half an hour, your ladyship,”
replied the old man, pulling at his grey forelock.

Linking her arm in his, Marguerite led her brother towards the cliffs.

“Half an hour,” she said, looking wistfully out to sea, “half
an hour more and you’ll be far from me, Armand! Oh! I can’t believe
that you are going, dear! These last few days—whilst Percy has been away,
and I’ve had you all to myself, have slipped by like a dream.”

“I am not going far, sweet one,” said the young man gently,
“a narrow channel to cross—a few miles of road—I can soon
come back.”

“Nay, ’tis not the distance, Armand—but that awful Paris . .
. just now . . .”

They had reached the edge of the cliff. The gentle sea-breeze blew
Marguerite’s hair about her face, and sent the ends of her soft lace
fichu waving round her, like a white and supple snake. She tried to pierce the
distance far away, beyond which lay the shores of France: that relentless and
stern France which was exacting her pound of flesh, the blood-tax from the
noblest of her sons.

“Our own beautiful country, Marguerite,” said Armand, who seemed to
have divined her thoughts.

“They are going too far, Armand,” she said vehemently. “You
are a republican, so am I . . . we have the same thoughts, the same enthusiasm
for liberty and equality . . . but even you must think that they are
going too far . . .”

“Hush!—” said Armand, instinctively, as he threw a quick,
apprehensive glance around him.

“Ah! you see: you don’t think yourself that it is safe even to
speak of these things—here in England!” She clung to him suddenly
with strong, almost motherly, passion: “Don’t go, Armand!”
she begged; “don’t go back! What should I do if . . . if . . . if .
. .”

Her voice was choked in sobs, her eyes, tender, blue and loving, gazed
appealingly at the young man, who in his turn looked steadfastly into hers.

“You would in any case be my own brave sister,” he said gently,
“who would remember that, when France is in peril, it is not for her sons
to turn their backs on her.”

Even as he spoke, that sweet, childlike smile crept back into her face,
pathetic in the extreme, for it seemed drowned in tears.

“Oh! Armand!” she said quaintly, “I sometimes wish you had
not so many lofty virtues. . . . I assure you little sins are far less
dangerous and uncomfortable. But you will be prudent?” she added
earnestly.

“As far as possible . . . I promise you.”

“Remember, dear, I have only you . . . to . . . to care for me. . .
.”

“Nay, sweet one, you have other interests now. Percy cares for you. . .
.”

A look of strange wistfulness crept into her eyes as she murmured,—

“He did . . . once . . .”

“But surely . . .”

“There, there, dear, don’t distress yourself on my account. Percy
is very good . . .”

“Nay!” he interrupted energetically, “I will distress myself
on your account, my Margot. Listen, dear, I have not spoken of these things to
you before; something always seemed to stop me when I wished to question you.
But, somehow, I feel as if I could not go away and leave you now without asking
you one question. . . . You need not answer it if you do not wish,” he
added, as he noted a sudden hard look, almost of apprehension, darting through
her eyes.

“What is it?” she asked simply.

“Does Sir Percy Blakeney know that . . . I mean, does he know the part
you played in the arrest of the Marquis de St. Cyr?”

She laughed—a mirthless, bitter, contemptuous laugh, which was like a
jarring chord in the music of her voice.

“That I denounced the Marquis de St. Cyr, you mean, to the tribunal that
ultimately sent him and all his family to the guillotine? Yes, he does know. .
. . I told him after I married him. . . .”

“You told him all the circumstances—which so completely exonerated
you from any blame?”

“It was too late to talk of ‘circumstances’; he heard the
story from other sources; my confession came too tardily, it seems. I could no
longer plead extenuating circumstances: I could not bemean myself by trying to
explain—”

“And?”

“And now I have the satisfaction, Armand, of knowing that the biggest
fool in England has the most complete contempt for his wife.”

She spoke with vehement bitterness this time, and Armand St. Just, who loved
her so dearly, felt that he had placed a somewhat clumsy finger upon an aching
wound.

“But Sir Percy loved you, Margot,” he repeated gently.

“Loved me?—Well, Armand, I thought at one time that he did, or I
should not have married him. I daresay,” she added, speaking very
rapidly, as if she were glad at last to lay down a heavy burden, which had
oppressed her for months, “I daresay that even you thought—as
everybody else did—that I married Sir Percy because of his
wealth—but I assure you, dear, that it was not so. He seemed to worship
me with a curious intensity of concentrated passion, which went straight to my
heart. I had never loved anyone before, as you know, and I was four-and-twenty
then—so I naturally thought that it was not in my nature to love. But it
has always seemed to me that it must be heavenly to be loved
blindly, passionately, wholly . . . worshipped, in fact—and the very fact
that Percy was slow and stupid was an attraction for me, as I thought he would
love me all the more. A clever man would naturally have other interests, an
ambitious man other hopes. . . . I thought that a fool would worship, and think
of nothing else. And I was ready to respond, Armand; I would have allowed
myself to be worshipped, and given infinite tenderness in return. . . .”

She sighed—and there was a world of disillusionment in that sigh. Armand
St. Just had allowed her to speak on without interruption: he listened to her,
whilst allowing his own thoughts to run riot. It was terrible to see a young
and beautiful woman—a girl in all but name—still standing almost at
the threshold of her life, yet bereft of hope, bereft of illusions, bereft of
those golden and fantastic dreams, which should have made her youth one long,
perpetual holiday.

Yet perhaps—though he loved his sister dearly—perhaps he
understood: he had studied men in many countries, men of all ages, men of every
grade of social and intellectual status, and inwardly he understood what
Marguerite had left unsaid. Granted that Percy Blakeney was dull-witted, but in
his slow-going mind, there would still be room for that ineradicable pride of a
descendant of a long line of English gentlemen. A Blakeney had died on Bosworth
Field, another had sacrificed life and fortune for the sake of a treacherous
Stuart: and that same pride—foolish and prejudiced as the republican
Armand would call it—must have been stung to the quick on hearing of the
sin which lay at Lady Blakeney’s door. She had been young, misguided,
ill-advised perhaps. Armand knew that: and those who took advantage of
Marguerite’s youth, her impulses and imprudence, knew it still better; but
Blakeney was slow-witted, he would not listen to “circumstances,”
he only clung to facts, and these had shown him Lady Blakeney denouncing a
fellow-man to a tribunal that knew no pardon: and the contempt he would feel
for the deed she had done, however unwittingly, would kill that same love in
him, in which sympathy and intellectuality could never have had a part.

Yet even now, his own sister puzzled him. Life and love have such strange
vagaries. Could it be that with the waning of her husband’s love,
Marguerite’s heart had awakened with love for him? Strange extremes meet
in love’s pathway: this woman, who had had half intellectual Europe at
her feet, might perhaps have set her affections on a fool. Marguerite was
gazing out towards the sunset. Armand could not see her face, but presently it
seemed to him that something which glittered for a moment in the golden evening
light, fell from her eyes onto her dainty fichu of lace.

But he could not broach that subject with her. He knew her strange, passionate
nature so well, and knew that reserve which lurked behind her frank, open ways.

They had always been together, these two, for their parents had died
when Armand was still a youth, and Marguerite but a child. He, some eight years
her senior, had watched over her until her marriage; had chaperoned her during
those brilliant years spent in the flat of the Rue de Richelieu, and had seen
her enter upon this new life of hers, here in England, with much sorrow and
some foreboding.

This was his first visit to England since her marriage, and the few months of
separation had already seemed to have built up a slight, thin partition between
brother and sister; the same deep, intense love was still there, on both sides,
but each now seemed to have a secret orchard, into which the other dared not
penetrate.

There was much Armand St. Just could not tell his sister; the political aspect
of the revolution in France was changing almost every day; she might not
understand how his own views and sympathies might become modified, even as the
excesses, committed by those who had been his friends, grew in horror and in
intensity. And Marguerite could not speak to her brother about the secrets of
her heart; she hardly understood them herself, she only knew that, in the midst
of luxury, she felt lonely and unhappy.

And now Armand was going away; she feared for his safety, she longed for his
presence. She would not spoil these last few sadly-sweet moments by speaking
about herself. She led him gently along the cliffs, then down to the beach;
their arms linked in one another’s, they had still so much to say that
lay just outside that secret orchard of theirs.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ACCREDITED AGENT

The afternoon was rapidly drawing to a close; and a long, chilly English
summer’s evening was throwing a misty pall over the green Kentish
landscape.

The Day Dream had set sail, and Marguerite Blakeney stood alone on the
edge of the cliff for over an hour, watching those white sails, which bore so
swiftly away from her the only being who really cared for her, whom she dared
to love, whom she knew she could trust.

Some little distance away to her left the lights from the coffee-room of
“The Fisherman’s Rest” glittered yellow in the gathering
mist; from time to time it seemed to her aching nerves as if she could catch
from thence the sound of merry-making and of jovial talk, or even that
perpetual, senseless laugh of her husband’s, which grated continually
upon her sensitive ears.

Sir Percy had had the delicacy to leave her severely alone. She supposed that,
in his own stupid, good-natured way, he may have understood that she would wish
to remain alone, while those white sails disappeared into the vague horizon, so
many miles away. He, whose notions of propriety and decorum were
supersensitive, had not suggested even that an attendant should remain within
call. Marguerite was grateful to her husband for all this; she always tried to
be grateful to him for his thoughtfulness, which was constant, and for his
generosity, which really was boundless. She tried even at times to curb the
sarcastic, bitter thoughts of him, which made her—in spite of
herself—say cruel, insulting things, which she vaguely hoped would wound
him.

Yes! she often wished to wound him, to make him feel that she too held him in
contempt, that she too had forgotten that once she had almost loved him. Loved
that inane fop! whose thoughts seemed unable to soar beyond the tying of a
cravat or the new cut of a coat. Bah! And yet! . . . vague memories, that were
sweet and ardent and attuned to this calm summer’s evening, came wafted
back to her memory, on the invisible wings of the light sea-breeze: the time
when first he worshipped her; he seemed so devoted—a very slave—and
there was a certain latent intensity in that love which had fascinated her.

Then suddenly that love, that devotion, which throughout his courtship she had
looked upon as the slavish fidelity of a dog, seemed to vanish completely.
Twenty-four hours after the simple little ceremony at old St. Roch, she had
told him the story of how, inadvertently, she had spoken of certain matters
connected with the Marquis de St. Cyr before some men—her
friends—who had used this information against the unfortunate Marquis,
and sent him and his family to the guillotine.

She hated the Marquis. Years ago, Armand, her dear brother, had loved Angèle de
St. Cyr, but St. Just was a plebeian, and the Marquis full of the pride and
arrogant prejudices of his caste. One day Armand, the respectful, timid lover,
ventured on sending a small poem—enthusiastic, ardent,
passionate—to the idol of his dreams. The next night he was waylaid just
outside Paris by the valets of the Marquis de St. Cyr, and ignominiously
thrashed—thrashed like a dog within an inch of his life—because he
had dared to raise his eyes to the daughter of the aristocrat. The incident was
one which, in those days, some two years before the great Revolution, was of
almost daily occurrence in France; incidents of that type, in fact, led to the
bloody reprisals, which a few years later sent most of those haughty heads to
the guillotine.

Marguerite remembered it all: what her brother must have suffered in his
manhood and his pride must have been appalling; what she suffered through him
and with him she never attempted even to analyse.

Then the day of retribution came. St. Cyr and his kind had found their masters,
in those same plebeians whom they had despised. Armand and Marguerite, both
intellectual, thinking beings, adopted with the enthusiasm of their years the
Utopian doctrines of the Revolution, while the Marquis de St. Cyr and his
family fought inch by inch for the retention of those privileges which had
placed them socially above their fellow-men. Marguerite, impulsive,
thoughtless, not calculating the purport of her words, still smarting under the
terrible insult her brother had suffered at the Marquis’ hands, happened
to hear—amongst her own coterie—that the St. Cyrs were in
treasonable correspondence with Austria, hoping to obtain the Emperor’s
support to quell the growing revolution in their own country.

In those days one denunciation was sufficient: Marguerite’s few
thoughtless words anent the Marquis de St. Cyr bore fruit within twenty-four
hours. He was arrested. His papers were searched: letters from the Austrian
Emperor, promising to send troops against the Paris populace, were found in his
desk. He was arraigned for treason against the nation, and sent to the
guillotine, whilst his family, his wife and his sons, shared this awful fate.

Marguerite, horrified at the terrible consequences of her own thoughtlessness,
was powerless to save the Marquis: her own coterie, the leaders of the
revolutionary movement, all proclaimed her as a heroine: and when she married
Sir Percy Blakeney, she did not perhaps altogether realise how severely he
would look upon the sin, which she had so inadvertently committed, and which
still lay heavily upon her soul. She made full confession of it to her husband,
trusting to his blind love for her, her boundless power over him, to soon make
him forget what might have sounded unpleasant to an English ear.

Certainly at the moment he seemed to take it very quietly; hardly, in fact, did
he appear to understand the meaning of all she said; but what was more certain
still, was that never after that could she detect the slightest sign of that
love, which she once believed had been wholly hers. Now they had drifted quite
apart, and Sir Percy seemed to have laid aside his love for her, as he would an
ill-fitting glove. She tried to rouse him by sharpening her ready wit against
his dull intellect; endeavoured to excite his jealousy, if she could not rouse
his love; tried to goad him to self-assertion, but all in vain. He remained the
same, always passive, drawling, sleepy, always courteous, invariably a
gentleman: she had all that the world and a wealthy husband can give to a
pretty woman, yet on this beautiful summer’s evening, with the white
sails of the Day Dream finally hidden by the evening shadows, she felt
more lonely than that poor tramp who plodded his way wearily along the rugged
cliffs.

With another heavy sigh, Marguerite Blakeney turned her back upon the sea and
cliffs, and walked slowly back towards “The Fisherman’s
Rest.” As she drew near, the sound of revelry, of gay, jovial laughter,
grew louder and more distinct. She could distinguish Sir Andrew Ffoulkes’
pleasant voice, Lord Tony’s boisterous guffaws, her husband’s
occasional, drawly, sleepy comments; then realising the loneliness of the road
and the fast gathering gloom round her, she quickened her steps . . . the next
moment she perceived a stranger coming rapidly towards her. Marguerite did not
look up: she was not the least nervous, and “The Fisherman’s
Rest” was now well within call.

The stranger paused when he saw Marguerite coming quickly towards him, and just
as she was about to slip past him, he said very quietly:

“Citoyenne St. Just.”

Marguerite uttered a little cry of astonishment, at thus hearing her own
familiar maiden name uttered so close to her. She looked up at the stranger,
and this time, with a cry of unfeigned pleasure, she put out both her hands
effusively towards him.

“Chauvelin!” she exclaimed.

“Himself, citoyenne, at your service,” said the stranger, gallantly
kissing the tips of her fingers.

Marguerite said nothing for a moment or two, as she surveyed with obvious
delight the not very prepossessing little figure before her. Chauvelin was then
nearer forty than thirty—a clever, shrewd-looking personality, with a
curious fox-like expression in the deep, sunken eyes. He was the same stranger
who an hour or two previously had joined Mr. Jellyband in a friendly glass of
wine.

“Chauvelin . . . my friend . . .” said Marguerite, with a pretty
little sigh of satisfaction. “I am mightily pleased to see you.”

No doubt poor Marguerite St. Just, lonely in the midst of her grandeur, and of
her starchy friends, was happy to see a face that brought back memories of that
happy time in Paris, when she reigned—a queen—over the intellectual
coterie of the Rue de Richelieu. She did not notice the sarcastic little smile,
however, that hovered round the thin lips of Chauvelin.

“But tell me,” she added merrily, “what in the world, or whom
in the world, are you doing here in England?”

She had resumed
her walk towards the inn, and Chauvelin turned and walked beside her.

“I might return the subtle compliment, fair lady,” he said.
“What of yourself?”

“Oh, I?” she said, with a shrug of the shoulders. “Je
m’ennuie, mon ami, that is all.”

They had reached the porch of “The Fisherman’s Rest,” but
Marguerite seemed loth to go within. The evening air was lovely after the
storm, and she had found a friend who exhaled the breath of Paris, who knew
Armand well, who could talk of all the merry, brilliant friends whom she had
left behind. So she lingered on under the pretty porch, while through the
gaily-lighted dormer-window of the coffee-room came sounds of laughter, of
calls for “Sally” and for beer, of tapping of mugs, and clinking of
dice, mingled with Sir Percy Blakeney’s inane and mirthless laugh.
Chauvelin stood beside her, his shrewd, pale, yellow eyes fixed on the pretty
face, which looked so sweet and childlike in this soft English summer twilight.

“You surprise me, citoyenne,” he said quietly, as he took a pinch
of snuff.

“Do I now?” she retorted gaily. “Faith, my little Chauvelin,
I should have thought that, with your penetration, you would have guessed that
an atmosphere composed of fogs and virtues would never suit Marguerite St.
Just.”

“Dear me! is it as bad as that?” he asked, in mock consternation.

“Quite,” she retorted, “and worse.”

“Strange! Now, I thought that a pretty woman would have found English
country life peculiarly attractive.”

“Yes! so did I,” she said with a sigh. “Pretty women,”
she added meditatively, “ought to have a good time in England, since all
the pleasant things are forbidden them—the very things they do every
day.”

“Quite so!”

“You’ll hardly believe it, my little Chauvelin,” she said
earnestly, “but I often pass a whole day—a whole day—without
encountering a single temptation.”

“No wonder,” retorted Chauvelin, gallantly, “that the
cleverest woman in Europe is troubled with ennui.”

She laughed one of her melodious, rippling, childlike laughs.

“It must be pretty bad, mustn’t it?” she said archly,
“or I should not have been so pleased to see you.”

“And this within a year of a romantic love match! . . .”

“Yes! . . . a year of a romantic love match . . . that’s just the
difficulty . . .”

“Ah! . . . that idyllic folly,” said Chauvelin, with quiet sarcasm,
“did not then survive the lapse of . . . weeks?”

“Idyllic follies never last, my little Chauvelin. . . . They come upon us
like the measles . . . and are as easily cured.”

Chauvelin took another pinch of snuff: he seemed very much addicted to that
pernicious habit, so prevalent in those days; perhaps, too, he found the taking
of snuff a convenient veil for disguising the quick, shrewd glances with which
he strove to read the very souls of those with whom he came in contact.

“No wonder,” he repeated, with the same gallantry, “that the
most active brain in Europe is troubled with ennui.”

“I was in hopes that you had a prescription against the malady, my little
Chauvelin.”

“How can I hope to succeed in that which Sir Percy Blakeney has failed to
accomplish?”

“Shall we leave Sir Percy out of the question for the present, my dear
friend?” she said drily.

“Ah! my dear lady, pardon me, but that is just what we cannot very well
do,” said Chauvelin, whilst once again his eyes, keen as those of a fox
on the alert, darted a quick glance at Marguerite. “I have a most perfect
prescription against the worst form of ennui, which I would have been
happy to submit to you, but—”

“But what?”

“There is Sir Percy.”

“What has he to do with it?”

“Quite a good deal, I am afraid. The prescription I would offer, fair
lady, is called by a very plebeian name: Work!”

“Work?”

Chauvelin looked at Marguerite long and scrutinisingly. It seemed as if those
keen, pale eyes of his were reading every one of her thoughts. They were alone
together; the evening air was quite still, and their soft whispers were drowned
in the noise which came from the coffee-room. Still, Chauvelin took a step or
two from under the porch, looked quickly and keenly all round him, then, seeing
that indeed no one was within earshot, he once more came back close to
Marguerite.

“Will you render France a small service, citoyenne?” he asked, with
a sudden change of manner, which lent his thin, fox-like face singular
earnestness.

“La, man!” she replied flippantly, “how serious you look all
of a sudden. . . . Indeed I do not know if I would render France a small
service—at any rate, it depends upon the kind of service she—or
you—want.”

“Have you ever heard of the Scarlet Pimpernel, Citoyenne St. Just?”
asked Chauvelin, abruptly.

“Heard of the Scarlet Pimpernel?” she retorted with a long and
merry laugh, “Faith, man! we talk of nothing else. . . . We have hats
‘à la Scarlet Pimpernel’; our horses are called ‘Scarlet
Pimpernel’; at the Prince of Wales’ supper party the other night we
had a ‘oufflé à la Scarlet Pimpernel.’ . . . Lud!” she added
gaily, “the other day I ordered at my milliner’s a blue dress
trimmed with green, and bless me, if she did not call that ‘à la Scarlet
Pimpernel.’”

Chauvelin had not moved while she prattled merrily along; he did not even
attempt to stop her when her musical voice and her childlike laugh went echoing
through the still evening air. But he remained serious and earnest whilst she
laughed, and his voice, clear, incisive, and hard, was not raised above his
breath as he said,—

“Then, as you have heard of that enigmatical personage, citoyenne, you
must also have guessed, and known, that the man who hides his identity under
that strange pseudonym, is the most bitter enemy of our republic, of France . .
. of men like Armand St. Just.”

“La! . . .” she said, with a quaint little sigh, “I dare
swear he is. . . . France has many bitter enemies these days.”

“But you, citoyenne, are a daughter of France, and should be ready to
help her in a moment of deadly peril.”

“My brother Armand devotes his life to France,” she retorted
proudly; “as for me, I can do nothing . . . here in England. . . .”

“Yes, you . . .” he urged still more earnestly, whilst his thin
fox-like face seemed suddenly to have grown impressive and full of dignity,
“here, in England, citoyenne . . . you alone can help us. . . .
Listen!—I have been sent over here by the Republican Government as its
representative: I present my credentials to Mr. Pitt in London to-morrow. One
of my duties here is to find out all about this League of the Scarlet
Pimpernel, which has become a standing menace to France, since it is pledged to
help our cursed aristocrats—traitors to their country, and enemies of the
people—to escape from the just punishment which they deserve. You know as
well as I do, citoyenne, that once they are over here, those French
émigrés try to rouse public feeling against the Republic. . . . They are
ready to join issue with any enemy bold enough to attack France. . . . Now,
within the last month, scores of these émigrés, some only suspected of
treason, others actually condemned by the Tribunal of Public Safety, have
succeeded in crossing the Channel. Their escape in each instance was planned,
organised and effected by this society of young English jackanapes, headed by a
man whose brain seems as resourceful as his identity is mysterious. All the
most strenuous efforts on the part of my spies have failed to discover who he
is; whilst the others are the hands, he is the head, who beneath this strange
anonymity calmly works at the destruction of France. I mean to strike at that
head, and for this I want your help—through him afterwards I can reach
the rest of the gang: he is a young buck in English society, of that I feel
sure. Find that man for me, citoyenne!” he urged, “find him for
France!”

Marguerite had listened to Chauvelin’s impassioned speech without
uttering a word, scarce making a movement, hardly daring to breathe. She had
told him before that this mysterious hero of romance was the talk of the smart
set to which she belonged; already, before this, her heart and her imagination
had been stirred by the thought of the brave man, who, unknown to fame, had
rescued hundreds of lives from a terrible, often an unmerciful fate. She had
but little real sympathy with those haughty French aristocrats, insolent in
their pride of caste, of whom the Comtesse de Tournay de Basserive was so
typical an example; but, republican and liberal-minded though she was from
principle, she hated and loathed the methods which the young Republic had
chosen for establishing itself. She had not been in Paris for some months; the
horrors and bloodshed of the Reign of Terror, culminating in the September
massacres, had only come across the Channel to her as a faint echo.
Robespierre, Danton, Marat, she had not known in their new guise of bloody
justiciaries, merciless wielders of the guillotine. Her very soul recoiled in
horror from these excesses, to which she feared her brother
Armand—moderate republican as he was—might become one day the
holocaust.

Then, when first she heard of this band of young English enthusiasts, who, for
sheer love of their fellow-men, dragged women and children, old and young men,
from a horrible death, her heart had glowed with pride for them, and now, as
Chauvelin spoke, her very soul went out to the gallant and mysterious leader of
the reckless little band, who risked his life daily, who gave it freely and
without ostentation, for the sake of humanity.

Her eyes were moist when Chauvelin had finished speaking, the lace at her bosom
rose and fell with her quick, excited breathing; she no longer heard the noise
of drinking from the inn, she did not heed her husband’s voice or his
inane laugh, her thoughts had gone wandering in search of the mysterious hero!
Ah! there was a man she might have loved, had he come her way: everything in
him appealed to her romantic imagination; his personality, his strength, his
bravery, the loyalty of those who served under him in the same noble cause,
and, above all, that anonymity which crowned him, as if with a halo of romantic
glory.

“Find him for France, citoyenne!”

Chauvelin’s voice close to her ear roused her from her dreams. The
mysterious hero had vanished, and, not twenty yards away from her, a man was
drinking and laughing, to whom she had sworn faith and loyalty.

“La! man,” she said with a return of her assumed flippancy,
“you are astonishing. Where in the world am I to look for him?”

“You go everywhere, citoyenne,” whispered Chauvelin, insinuatingly,
“Lady Blakeney is the pivot of social London, so I am told . . . you see
everything, you hear everything.”

“Easy, my friend,” retorted Marguerite, drawing herself up to her
full height and looking down, with a slight thought of contempt on the small,
thin figure before her. “Easy! you seem to forget that there are six feet
of Sir Percy Blakeney, and a long line of ancestors to stand between Lady
Blakeney and such a thing as you propose.”

“For the sake of France, citoyenne!” reiterated Chauvelin,
earnestly.

“Tush, man, you talk nonsense anyway; for even if you did know who this
Scarlet Pimpernel is, you could do nothing to him—an Englishman!”

“I’d take my chance of that,” said Chauvelin, with a dry,
rasping little laugh. “At any rate we could send him to the guillotine
first to cool his ardour, then, when there is a diplomatic fuss about it, we
can apologise—humbly—to the British Government, and, if necessary,
pay compensation to the bereaved family.”

“What you propose is horrible, Chauvelin,” she said, drawing away
from him as from some noisome insect. “Whoever the man may be, he is
brave and noble, and never—do you hear me?—never would I lend a
hand to such villainy.”

“You prefer to be insulted by every French aristocrat who comes to this
country?”

Chauvelin had taken sure aim when he shot this tiny shaft. Marguerite’s
fresh young cheeks became a thought more pale and she bit her under lip, for
she would not let him see that the shaft had struck home.

“That is beside the question,” she said at last with indifference.
“I can defend myself, but I refuse to do any dirty work for you—or
for France. You have other means at your disposal; you must use them, my
friend.”

And without another look at Chauvelin, Marguerite Blakeney turned her back on
him and walked straight into the inn.

“That is not your last word, citoyenne,” said Chauvelin, as a flood
of light from the passage illumined her elegant, richly-clad figure, “we
meet in London, I hope!”

“We meet in London,” she said, speaking over her shoulder at him,
“but that is my last word.”

She threw open the coffee-room door and disappeared from his view, but he
remained under the porch for a moment or two, taking a pinch of snuff. He had
received a rebuke and a snub, but his shrewd, fox-like face looked neither
abashed nor disappointed; on the contrary, a curious smile, half sarcastic and
wholly satisfied, played around the corners of his thin lips.

CHAPTER IX.

THE OUTRAGE

A beautiful starlit night had followed on the day of incessant rain: a cool,
balmy, late summer’s night, essentially English in its suggestion of
moisture and scent of wet earth and dripping leaves.

The magnificent coach, drawn by four of the finest thoroughbreds in England,
had driven off along the London road, with Sir Percy Blakeney on the box,
holding the reins in his slender feminine hands, and beside him Lady Blakeney
wrapped in costly furs. A fifty-mile drive on a starlit summer’s night!
Marguerite had hailed the notion of it with delight. . . . Sir Percy was an
enthusiastic whip; his four thoroughbreds, which had been sent down to Dover a
couple of days before, were just sufficiently fresh and restive to add zest to
the expedition, and Marguerite revelled in anticipation of the few hours of
solitude, with the soft night breeze fanning her cheeks, her thoughts
wandering, whither away? She knew from old experience that Sir Percy would
speak little, if at all: he had often driven her on his beautiful coach for
hours at night, from point to point, without making more than one or two casual
remarks upon the weather or the state of the roads. He was very fond of driving
by night, and she had very quickly adopted his fancy: as she sat next to him
hour after hour, admiring the dexterous, certain way in which he handled the
reins, she often wondered what went on in that slow-going head of his. He never
told her, and she had never cared to ask.

At “The Fisherman’s Rest” Mr. Jellyband was going the round,
putting out the lights. His bar customers had all gone, but upstairs in the
snug little bedrooms, Mr. Jellyband had quite a few important guests: the
Comtesse de Tournay, with Suzanne, and the Vicomte, and there were two more
bedrooms ready for Sir Andrew Ffoulkes and Lord Antony Dewhurst, if the two
young men should elect to honour the ancient hostelry and stay the night.

For the moment these two young gallants were comfortably installed in the
coffee-room, before the huge log-fire, which, in spite of the mildness of the
evening, had been allowed to burn merrily.

“I say, Jelly, has everyone gone?” asked Lord Tony, as the worthy
landlord still busied himself clearing away glasses and mugs.

“Everyone, as you see, my lord.”

“And all your servants gone to bed?”

“All except the boy on duty in the bar, and,” added Mr. Jellyband
with a laugh, “I expect he’ll be asleep afore long, the
rascal.”

“Then we can talk here undisturbed for half an hour?”

“At your service, my lord. . . . I’ll leave your candles on the
dresser . . . and your rooms are quite ready . . . I sleep at the top of the
house myself, but if your lordship’ll only call loudly enough, I daresay
I shall hear.”

“All right, Jelly . . . and . . . I say, put the lamp out—the
fire’ll give us all the light we need—and we don’t want to
attract the passer-by.”

“All ri’, my lord.”

Mr. Jellyband did as he was bid—he turned out the quaint old lamp that
hung from the raftered ceiling and blew out all the candles.

“Let’s have a bottle of wine, Jelly,” suggested Sir Andrew.

“All ri’, sir!”

Jellyband went off to fetch the wine. The room now was quite dark, save for the
circle of ruddy and fitful light formed by the brightly blazing logs in the
hearth.

“Is that all, gentlemen?” asked Jellyband, as he returned with a
bottle of wine and a couple of glasses, which he placed on the table.

“That’ll do nicely, thanks, Jelly!” said Lord Tony.

“Good-night, my lord! Good-night, sir!”

“Good-night, Jelly!”

The two young men listened, whilst the heavy tread of Mr. Jellyband was heard
echoing along the passage and staircase. Presently even that sound died out,
and the whole of “The Fisherman’s Rest” seemed wrapt in
sleep, save the two young men drinking in silence beside the hearth.

For a while no sound was heard, even in the coffee-room, save the ticking of
the old grandfather’s clock and the crackling of the burning wood.

“All right again this time, Ffoulkes?” asked Lord Antony at last.

Sir Andrew had been dreaming evidently, gazing into the fire, and seeing
therein, no doubt, a pretty, piquant face, with large brown eyes and a wealth
of dark curls round a childish forehead.

“Yes!” he said, still musing, “all right!”

“No hitch?”

“None.”

Lord Antony laughed pleasantly as he poured himself out another glass of wine.

“I need not ask, I suppose, whether you found the journey pleasant this
time?”

“No, friend, you need not ask,” replied Sir Andrew, gaily.
“It was all right.”

“Then here’s to her very good health,” said jovial Lord Tony.
“She’s a bonnie lass, though she is a French one. And
here’s to your courtship—may it flourish and prosper
exceedingly.”

He drained his glass to the last drop, then joined his friend beside the
hearth.

“Well! you’ll be doing the journey next, Tony, I expect,”
said Sir Andrew, rousing himself from his meditations, “you and Hastings,
certainly; and I hope you may have as pleasant a task as I had, and as charming
a travelling companion. You have no idea, Tony. . . .”

“No! I haven’t,” interrupted his friend pleasantly,
“but I’ll take your word for it. And now,” he added, whilst a
sudden earnestness crept over his jovial young face, “how about
business?”

The two young men drew their chairs closer together,
and instinctively, though they were alone, their voices sank to a whisper.

“I saw the Scarlet Pimpernel alone, for a few moments in Calais,”
said Sir Andrew, “a day or two ago. He crossed over to England two days
before we did. He had escorted the party all the way from Paris,
dressed—you’ll never credit it!—as an old market woman, and
driving—until they were safely out of the city—the covered cart,
under which the Comtesse de Tournay, Mlle. Suzanne, and the Vicomte lay
concealed among the turnips and cabbages. They, themselves, of course, never
suspected who their driver was. He drove them right through a line of soldiery
and a yelling mob, who were screaming, ‘À bas les aristos!’ But the
market cart got through along with some others, and the Scarlet Pimpernel, in
shawl, petticoat and hood, yelled ‘À bas les aristos!’ louder than
anybody. Faith!” added the young man, as his eyes glowed with enthusiasm
for the beloved leader, “that man’s a marvel! His cheek is
preposterous, I vow!—and that’s what carries him through.”

Lord Antony, whose vocabulary was more limited than that of his friend, could
only find an oath or two with which to show his admiration for his leader.

“He wants you and Hastings to meet him at Calais,” said Sir Andrew,
more quietly, “on the 2nd of next month. Let me see! that will be next
Wednesday.”

“Yes.”

“It is, of course, the case of the Comte de Tournay, this time; a
dangerous task, for the Comte, whose escape from his château, after he had been
declared a ‘suspect’ by the Committee of Public Safety, was a
masterpiece of the Scarlet Pimpernel’s ingenuity, is now under sentence
of death. It will be rare sport to get him out of France, and you will
have a narrow escape, if you get through at all. St. Just has actually gone to
meet him—of course, no one suspects St. Just as yet; but after that . . .
to get them both out of the country! I’faith, ’twill be a tough
job, and tax even the ingenuity of our chief. I hope I may yet have orders to
be of the party.”

“Have you any special instructions for me?”

“Yes! rather more precise ones than usual. It appears that the Republican
Government have sent an accredited agent over to England, a man named
Chauvelin, who is said to be terribly bitter against our league, and determined
to discover the identity of our leader, so that he may have him kidnapped, the
next time he attempts to set foot in France. This Chauvelin has brought a whole
army of spies with him, and until the chief has sampled the lot, he thinks we
should meet as seldom as possible on the business of the league, and on no
account should talk to each other in public places for a time. When he wants to
speak to us, he will contrive to let us know.”

The two young men were both bending over the fire, for the blaze had died down,
and only a red glow from the dying embers cast a lurid light on a narrow
semicircle in front of the hearth. The rest of the room lay buried in complete
gloom; Sir Andrew had taken a pocket-book from his pocket, and drawn therefrom
a paper, which he unfolded, and together they tried to read it by the dim red
firelight. So intent were they upon this, so wrapt up in the cause, the
business they had so much at heart, so precious was this document which came
from the very hand of their adored leader, that they had eyes and ears only for
that. They lost count of the sounds around them, of the dropping of crisp ash
from the grate, of the monotonous ticking of the clock, of the soft, almost
imperceptible rustle of something on the floor close beside them. A figure had
emerged from under one of the benches; with snake-like, noiseless movements it
crept closer and closer to the two young men, not breathing, only gliding along
the floor, in the inky blackness of the room.

“You are to read these instructions and commit them to memory,”
said Sir Andrew, “then destroy them.”

He was about to replace the letter-case into his pocket, when a tiny slip of
paper fluttered from it and fell on to the floor. Lord Antony stooped and
picked it up.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” replied Sir Andrew.

“It dropped out of your pocket just now. It certainly did not seem to be
with the other paper.”

“Strange!—I wonder when it got there? It is from the chief,”
he added, glancing at the paper.

Both stooped to try and decipher this last tiny scrap of paper on which a few
words had been hastily scrawled, when suddenly a slight noise attracted their
attention, which seemed to come from the passage beyond.

“What’s that?” said both instinctively. Lord Antony crossed
the room towards the door, which he threw open quickly and suddenly; at that
very moment he received a stunning blow between the eyes, which threw him back
violently into the room. Simultaneously the crouching, snake-like figure in the
gloom had jumped up and hurled itself from behind upon the unsuspecting Sir
Andrew, felling him to the ground.

All this occurred within the short space of two or three seconds, and before
either Lord Antony or Sir Andrew had time or chance to utter a cry or to make
the faintest struggle. They were each seized by two men, a muffler was quickly
tied round the mouth of each, and they were pinioned to one another back to
back, their arms, hands, and legs securely fastened.

One man had in the meanwhile quietly shut the door; he wore a mask and now
stood motionless while the others completed their work.

“All safe, citoyen!” said one of the men, as he took a final survey
of the bonds which secured the two young men.

“Good!” replied the man at the door; “now search their
pockets and give me all the papers you find.”

This was promptly and quietly done. The masked man having taken possession of
all the papers, listened for a moment or two if there were any sound within
“The Fisherman’s Rest.” Evidently satisfied that this
dastardly outrage had remained unheard, he once more opened the door and
pointed peremptorily down the passage. The four men lifted Sir Andrew and Lord
Antony from the ground, and as quietly, as noiselessly as they had come, they
bore the two pinioned young gallants out of the inn and along the Dover Road
into the gloom beyond.

In the coffee-room the masked leader of this daring attempt was quickly
glancing through the stolen papers.

“Not a bad day’s work on the whole,” he muttered, as he
quietly took off his mask, and his pale, fox-like eyes glittered in the red
glow of the fire. “Not a bad day’s work.”

He opened one or two more letters from Sir Andrew Ffoulkes’ pocket-book,
noted the tiny scrap of paper which the two young men had only just had time to
read; but one letter specially, signed Armand St. Just, seemed to give him
strange satisfaction.

“Armand St. Just a traitor after all,” he murmured. “Now,
fair Marguerite Blakeney,” he added viciously between his clenched teeth,
“I think that you will help me to find the Scarlet Pimpernel.”

CHAPTER X.

IN THE OPERA BOX

It was one of the gala nights at Covent Garden Theatre, the first of the autumn
season in this memorable year of grace 1792.

The house was packed, both in the smart orchestra boxes and the pit, as well as
in the more plebeian balconies and galleries above. Glück’s
Orpheus made a strong appeal to the more intellectual portions of the
house, whilst the fashionable women, the gaily-dressed and brilliant throng,
spoke to the eye of those who cared but little for this “latest
importation from Germany.”

Selina Storace had been duly applauded after her grand aria by her
numerous admirers; Benjamin Incledon, the acknowledged favourite of the ladies,
had received special gracious recognition from the royal box; and now the
curtain came down after the glorious finale to the second act, and the
audience, which had hung spell-bound on the magic strains of the great maestro,
seemed collectively to breathe a long sigh of satisfaction, previous to letting
loose its hundreds of waggish and frivolous tongues.

In the smart orchestra boxes many well-known faces were to be seen.
Mr. Pitt, overweighted with cares of state, was finding brief relaxation in
to-night’s musical treat; the Prince of Wales, jovial, rotund, somewhat
coarse and commonplace in appearance, moved about from box to box, spending
brief quarters of an hour with those of his more intimate friends.

In Lord Grenville’s box, too, a curious, interesting personality
attracted everyone’s attention; a thin, small figure with shrewd,
sarcastic face and deep-set eyes, attentive to the music, keenly critical of
the audience, dressed in immaculate black, with dark hair free from any powder.
Lord Grenville—Foreign Secretary of State—paid him marked, though
frigid deference.

Here and there, dotted about among distinctly English types of beauty, one or
two foreign faces stood out in marked contrast: the haughty aristocratic cast
of countenance of the many French royalist émigrés who, persecuted by
the relentless, revolutionary faction of their country, had found a peaceful
refuge in England. On these faces sorrow and care were deeply writ; the women
especially paid but little heed, either to the music or to the brilliant
audience; no doubt their thoughts were far away with husband, brother, son
maybe, still in peril, or lately succumbed to a cruel fate.

Among these the Comtesse de Tournay de Basserive, but lately arrived from
France, was a most conspicuous figure: dressed in deep, heavy black silk, with
only a white lace kerchief to relieve the aspect of mourning about her person,
she sat beside Lady Portarles, who was vainly trying by witty sallies and
somewhat broad jokes, to bring a smile to the Comtesse’s sad mouth.
Behind her sat little Suzanne and the Vicomte, both silent and somewhat shy
among so many strangers. Suzanne’s eyes seemed wistful; when she first
entered the crowded house, she had looked eagerly all around, scanned every
face, scrutinised every box. Evidently the one face she wished to see was not
there, for she settled herself down quietly behind her mother, listened
apathetically to the music, and took no further interest in the audience
itself.

“Ah, Lord Grenville,” said Lady Portarles, as following a discreet
knock, the clever, interesting head of the Secretary of State appeared in the
doorway of the box, “you could not arrive more à propos. Here is
Madame la Comtesse de Tournay positively dying to hear the latest news from
France.”

The distinguished diplomatist had come forward and was shaking hands with the
ladies.

“Alas!” he said sadly, “it is of the very worst. The
massacres continue; Paris literally reeks with blood; and the guillotine claims
a hundred victims a day.”

Pale and tearful, the Comtesse was leaning back in her chair, listening
horror-struck to this brief and graphic account of what went on in her own
misguided country.

“Ah, Monsieur!” she said in broken English, “it is dreadful
to hear all that—and my poor husband still in that awful country. It is
terrible for me to be sitting here, in a theatre, all safe and in peace, whilst
he is in such peril.”

“Lud, Madame!” said honest, bluff Lady Portarles, “your
sitting in a convent won’t make your husband safe, and you have your
children to consider: they are too young to be dosed with anxiety and premature
mourning.”

The Comtesse smiled through her tears at the vehemence of her friend. Lady
Portarles, whose voice and manner would not have misfitted a jockey, had a
heart of gold, and hid the most genuine sympathy and most gentle kindliness,
beneath the somewhat coarse manners affected by some ladies at that time.

“Besides which, Madame,” added Lord Grenville, “did you not
tell me yesterday that the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel had pledged their
honour to bring M. le Comte safely across the Channel?”

“Ah, yes!” replied the Comtesse, “and that is my only hope. I
saw Lord Hastings yesterday . . . he reassured me again.”

“Then I am sure you need have no fear. What the league have sworn, that
they surely will accomplish. Ah!” added the old diplomatist with a sigh,
“if I were but a few years younger . . .”

“La, man!” interrupted honest Lady Portarles, “you are still
young enough to turn your back on that French scarecrow that sits enthroned in
your box to-night.”

“I wish I could . . . but your ladyship must remember that in serving our
country we must put prejudices aside. M. Chauvelin is the accredited agent of
his Government . . .”

“Odd’s fish, man!” she retorted, “you don’t call
those bloodthirsty ruffians over there a government, do you?”

“It has not been thought advisable as yet,” said the Minister,
guardedly, “for England to break off diplomatic relations with France,
and we cannot therefore refuse to receive with courtesy the agent she wishes to
send to us.”

“Diplomatic relations be demmed, my lord! That sly little fox over there
is nothing but a spy, I’ll warrant, and you’ll find—an
I’m much mistaken, that he’ll concern himself little with
diplomacy, beyond trying to do mischief to royalist refugees—to our
heroic Scarlet Pimpernel and to the members of that brave little league.”

“I am sure,” said the Comtesse, pursing up her thin lips,
“that if this Chauvelin wishes to do us mischief, he will find a faithful
ally in Lady Blakeney.”

“Bless the woman!” ejaculated Lady Portarles, “did ever
anyone see such perversity? My Lord Grenville, you have the gift of the gab,
will you please explain to Madame la Comtesse that she is acting like a fool.
In your position here in England, Madame,” she added, turning a wrathful
and resolute face towards the Comtesse, “you cannot afford to put on the
hoity-toity airs you French aristocrats are so fond of. Lady Blakeney may or
may not be in sympathy with those ruffians in France; she may or may not have
had anything to do with the arrest and condemnation of St. Cyr, or whatever the
man’s name is, but she is the leader of fashion in this country; Sir
Percy Blakeney has more money than any half-dozen other men put together, he is
hand and glove with royalty, and your trying to snub Lady Blakeney will not
harm her, but will make you look a fool. Isn’t that so, my lord?”

But what Lord Grenville thought of this matter, or to what reflections this
homely tirade of Lady Portarles led the Comtesse de Tournay, remained unspoken,
for the curtain had just risen on the third act of Orpheus, and
admonishments to silence came from every part of the house.

Lord Grenville took a hasty farewell of the ladies and slipped back into his
box, where M. Chauvelin had sat all through this entr’acte, with
his eternal snuff-box in his hand, and with his keen pale eyes intently fixed
upon a box opposite to him, where, with much frou-frou of silken skirts, much
laughter and general stir of curiosity amongst the audience, Marguerite
Blakeney had just entered, accompanied by her husband, and looking divinely
pretty beneath the wealth of her golden, reddish curls, slightly besprinkled
with powder, and tied back at the nape of her graceful neck with a gigantic
black bow. Always dressed in the very latest vagary of fashion, Marguerite
alone among the ladies that night had discarded the cross-over fichu and
broad-lapelled over-dress, which had been in fashion for the last two or three
years. She wore the short-waisted classical-shaped gown, which so soon was to
become the approved mode in every country in Europe. It suited her graceful,
regal figure to perfection, composed as it was of shimmering stuff which seemed
a mass of rich gold embroidery.

As she entered, she leant for a moment out of the box, taking stock of all
those present whom she knew. Many bowed to her as she did so, and from the
royal box there came also a quick and gracious salute.

Chauvelin watched her intently all through the commencement of the third act,
as she sat enthralled with the music, her exquisite little hand toying with a
small jewelled fan, her regal head, her throat, arms and neck covered with
magnificent diamonds and rare gems, the gift of the adoring husband who
sprawled leisurely by her side.

Marguerite was passionately fond of music. Orpheus charmed her to-night.
The very joy of living was writ plainly upon the sweet young face, it sparkled
out of the merry blue eyes and lit up the smile that lurked around the lips.
She was after all but five-and-twenty, in the heyday of youth, the darling of a
brilliant throng, adored, fêted, petted, cherished. Two days ago the
Day Dream had returned from Calais, bringing her news that her idolised
brother had safely landed, that he thought of her, and would be prudent for her
sake.

What wonder for the moment, and listening to Glück’s impassioned strains,
that she forgot her disillusionments, forgot her vanished love-dreams, forgot
even the lazy, good-humoured nonentity who had made up for his lack of
spiritual attainments by lavishing worldly advantages upon her.

He had stayed beside her in the box just as long as convention demanded, making
way for His Royal Highness, and for the host of admirers who in a continued
procession came to pay homage to the queen of fashion. Sir Percy had strolled
away, to talk to more congenial friends probably. Marguerite did not even
wonder whither he had gone—she cared so little; she had had a little
court round her, composed of the jeunesse dorée of London, and had just
dismissed them all, wishing to be alone with Glück for a brief while.

A discreet knock at the door roused her from her enjoyment.

“Come in,” she said with some impatience, without turning to look
at the intruder.

Chauvelin, waiting for his opportunity, noted that she was alone, and now,
without pausing for that impatient “Come in,” he quietly slipped
into the box, and the next moment was standing behind Marguerite’s chair.

“A word with you, citoyenne,” he said quietly.

Marguerite turned quickly, in alarm, which was not altogether feigned.

“Lud, man! you frightened me,” she said with a forced little laugh,
“your presence is entirely inopportune. I want to listen to Glück, and
have no mind for talking.”

“But this is my only opportunity,” he said, as quietly, and without
waiting for permission, he drew a chair close behind her—so close that he
could whisper in her ear, without disturbing the audience, and without being
seen, in the dark background of the box. “This is my only
opportunity,” he repeated, as she vouchsafed him no reply, “Lady
Blakeney is always so surrounded, so fêted by her court, that a mere old
friend has but very little chance.”

“Faith, man!” she said impatiently, “you must seek for
another opportunity then. I am going to Lord Grenville’s ball to-night
after the opera. So are you, probably. I’ll give you five minutes then. .
. .”

“Three minutes in the privacy of this box are quite sufficient for
me,” he rejoined placidly, “and I think that you would be wise to
listen to me, Citoyenne St. Just.”

Marguerite instinctively shivered. Chauvelin had not raised his voice above a
whisper; he was now quietly taking a pinch of snuff, yet there was something in
his attitude, something in those pale, foxy eyes, which seemed to freeze the
blood in her veins, as would the sight of some deadly hitherto unguessed peril.

“Is that a threat, citoyen?” she asked at last.

“Nay, fair lady,” he said gallantly, “only an arrow shot into
the air.”

He paused a moment, like a cat which sees a mouse running heedlessly by, ready
to spring, yet waiting with that feline sense of enjoyment of mischief about to
be done. Then he said quietly—

“Your brother, St. Just, is in peril.”

Not a muscle moved in the beautiful face before him. He could only see it in
profile, for Marguerite seemed to be watching the stage intently, but Chauvelin
was a keen observer; he noticed the sudden rigidity of the eyes, the hardening
of the mouth, the sharp, almost paralysed tension of the beautiful, graceful
figure.

“Lud, then,” she said, with affected merriment, “since
’tis one of your imaginary plots, you’d best go back to your own
seat and leave me to enjoy the music.”

And with her hand she began to beat time nervously against the cushion of the
box. Selina Storace was singing the “Che farò” to an audience that
hung spellbound upon the prima donna’s lips. Chauvelin did not move from
his seat; he quietly watched that tiny nervous hand, the only indication that
his shaft had indeed struck home.

“Well?” she said suddenly and irrelevantly, and with the same
feigned unconcern.

“Well, citoyenne?” he rejoined placidly.

“About my brother?”

“I have news of him for you which, I think, will interest you, but first
let me explain. . . . May I?”

The question was unnecessary. He felt, though Marguerite still held her head
steadily averted from him, that her every nerve was strained to hear what he
had to say.

“The other day, citoyenne,” he said, “I asked for your help.
. . . France needed it, and I thought I could rely on you, but you gave me your
answer. . . . Since then the exigencies of my own affairs and your own social
duties have kept us apart . . . although many things have happened. . .
.”

“To the point, I pray you, citoyen,” she said lightly; “the
music is entrancing, and the audience will get impatient of your talk.”

“One moment, citoyenne. The day on which I had the honour of meeting you
at Dover, and less than an hour after I had your final answer, I obtained
possession of some papers, which revealed another of those subtle schemes for
the escape of a batch of French aristocrats—that traitor de Tournay
amongst others—all organised by that arch-meddler, the Scarlet Pimpernel.
Some of the threads, too, of this mysterious organisation have fallen into my
hands, but not all, and I want you—nay! you must help me to gather
them together.”

Marguerite seemed to have listened to him with marked impatience; she now
shrugged her shoulders and said gaily—

“Bah! man. Have I not already told you that I care nought about your
schemes or about the Scarlet Pimpernel. And had you not spoken about my brother
. . .”

“A little patience, I entreat, citoyenne,” he continued
imperturbably. “Two gentlemen, Lord Antony Dewhurst and Sir Andrew
Ffoulkes were at ‘The Fisherman’s Rest’ at Dover that same
night.”

“I know. I saw them there.”

“They were already known to my spies as members of that accursed league.
It was Sir Andrew Ffoulkes who escorted the Comtesse de Tournay and her
children across the Channel. When the two young men were alone, my spies forced
their way into the coffee-room of the inn, gagged and pinioned the two
gallants, seized their papers, and brought them to me.”

In a moment she had guessed the danger. Papers? . . . Had Armand been
imprudent? . . . The very thought struck her with nameless terror. Still she
would not let this man see that she feared; she laughed gaily and lightly.

“Faith! and your impudence passes belief,” she said merrily.
“Robbery and violence!—in England!—in a crowded inn! Your men
might have been caught in the act!”

“What if they had? They are children of France, and have been trained by
your humble servant. Had they been caught they would have gone to jail, or even
to the gallows, without a word of protest or indiscretion; at any rate it was
well worth the risk. A crowded inn is safer for these little operations than
you think, and my men have experience.”

“Well? And those papers?” she asked carelessly.

“Unfortunately, though they have given me cognisance of certain names . .
. certain movements . . . enough, I think, to thwart their projected
coup for the moment, it would only be for the moment, and still leaves
me in ignorance of the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel.”

“La! my friend,” she said, with the same assumed flippancy of
manner, “then you are where you were before, aren’t you? and you
can let me enjoy the last strophe of the aria. Faith!” she added,
ostentatiously smothering an imaginary yawn, “had you not spoken about my
brother . . .”

“I am coming to him now, citoyenne. Among the papers there was a letter
to Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, written by your brother, St. Just.”

“Well? And?”

“That letter shows him to be not only in sympathy with the enemies of
France, but actually a helper, if not a member, of the League of the Scarlet
Pimpernel.”

The blow had been struck at last. All along, Marguerite had been expecting it;
she would not show fear, she was determined to seem unconcerned, flippant even.
She wished, when the shock came, to be prepared for it, to have all her wits
about her—those wits which had been nicknamed the keenest in Europe. Even
now she did not flinch. She knew that Chauvelin had spoken the truth; the man
was too earnest, too blindly devoted to the misguided cause he had at heart,
too proud of his countrymen, of those makers of revolutions, to stoop to low,
purposeless falsehoods.

That letter of Armand’s—foolish, imprudent Armand—was in
Chauvelin’s hands. Marguerite knew that as if she had seen the letter
with her own eyes; and Chauvelin would hold that letter for purposes of his
own, until it suited him to destroy it or to make use of it against Armand. All
that she knew, and yet she continued to laugh more gaily, more loudly than she
had done before.

“La, man!” she said, speaking over her shoulder and looking him
full and squarely in the face, “did I not say it was some imaginary plot.
. . . Armand in league with that enigmatic Scarlet Pimpernel! . . . Armand busy
helping those French aristocrats whom he despises! . . . Faith, the tale does
infinite credit to your imagination!”

“Let me make my point clear, citoyenne,” said Chauvelin, with the
same unruffled calm, “I must assure you that St. Just is compromised
beyond the slightest hope of pardon.”

Inside the orchestra box all was silent for a moment or two. Marguerite sat,
straight upright, rigid and inert, trying to think, trying to face the
situation, to realise what had best be done.

In the house Storace had finished the aria, and was even now bowing in
her classic garb, but in approved eighteenth-century fashion, to the
enthusiastic audience, who cheered her to the echo.

“Chauvelin,” said Marguerite Blakeney at last, quietly, and without
that touch of bravado which had characterised her attitude all along,
“Chauvelin, my friend, shall we try to understand one another. It seems
that my wits have become rusty by contact with this damp climate. Now, tell me,
you are very anxious to discover the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel,
isn’t that so?”

“France’s most bitter enemy, citoyenne . . . all the more
dangerous, as he works in the dark.”

“All the more noble, you mean. . . . Well!—and you would now force
me to do some spying work for you in exchange for my brother Armand’s
safety?—Is that it?”

“Fie! two very ugly words, fair lady,” protested Chauvelin,
urbanely. “There can be no question of force, and the service which I
would ask of you, in the name of France, could never be called by the shocking
name of spying.”

“At any rate, that is what it is called over here,” she said drily.
“That is your intention, is it not?”

“My intention is, that you yourself win a free pardon for Armand St. Just
by doing me a small service.”

“What is it?”

“Only watch for me to-night, Citoyenne St. Just,” he said eagerly.
“Listen: among the papers which were found about the person of Sir Andrew
Ffoulkes there was a tiny note. See!” he added, taking a tiny scrap of
paper from his pocket-book and handing it to her.

It was the same scrap of paper which, four days ago, the two young men had been
in the act of reading, at the very moment when they were attacked by
Chauvelin’s minions. Marguerite took it mechanically and stooped to read
it. There were only two lines, written in a distorted, evidently disguised,
handwriting; she read them half aloud—

“‘Remember we must not meet more often than is strictly necessary.
You have all instructions for the 2nd. If you wish to speak to me again, I
shall be at G.’s ball.’”

“What does it mean?” she asked.

“Look again, citoyenne, and you will understand.”

“There is a device here in the corner, a small red flower . . .”

“Yes.”

“The Scarlet Pimpernel,” she said eagerly, “and G.’s
ball means Grenville’s ball. . . . He will be at my Lord
Grenville’s ball to-night.”

“That is how I interpret the note, citoyenne,” concluded Chauvelin,
blandly. “Lord Antony Dewhurst and Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, after they were
pinioned and searched by my spies, were carried by my orders to a lonely house
on the Dover Road, which I had rented for the purpose: there they remained
close prisoners until this morning. But having found this tiny scrap of paper,
my intention was that they should be in London, in time to attend my Lord
Grenville’s ball. You see, do you not? that they must have a great deal
to say to their chief . . . and thus they will have an opportunity of speaking
to him to-night, just as he directed them to do. Therefore, this morning, those
two young gallants found every bar and bolt open in that lonely house on the
Dover Road, their jailers disappeared, and two good horses standing ready
saddled and tethered in the yard. I have not seen them yet, but I think we may
safely conclude that they did not draw rein until they reached London. Now you
see how simple it all is, citoyenne!”

“It does seem simple, doesn’t it?” she said, with a final
bitter attempt at flippancy, “when you want to kill a chicken . . . you
take hold of it . . . then you wring its neck . . . it’s only the chicken
who does not find it quite so simple. Now you hold a knife at my throat, and a
hostage for my obedience. . . . You find it simple. . . . I don’t.”

“Nay, citoyenne, I offer you a chance of saving the brother you love from
the consequences of his own folly.”

Marguerite’s face softened, her eyes at last grew moist, as she murmured,
half to herself:

“The only being in the world who has loved me truly and constantly. . . .
But what do you want me to do, Chauvelin?” she said, with a world of
despair in her tear-choked voice. “In my present position, it is
well-nigh impossible!”

“Nay, citoyenne,” he said drily and relentlessly, not heeding that
despairing, childlike appeal, which might have melted a heart of stone,
“as Lady Blakeney, no one suspects you, and with your help to-night I
may—who knows?—succeed in finally establishing the identity of the
Scarlet Pimpernel. . . . You are going to the ball anon. . . . Watch for me
there, citoyenne, watch and listen. . . . You can tell me if you hear a chance
word or whisper. . . . You can note everyone to whom Sir Andrew Ffoulkes or
Lord Antony Dewhurst will speak. You are absolutely beyond suspicion now. The
Scarlet Pimpernel will be at Lord Grenville’s ball to-night. Find out who
he is, and I will pledge the word of France that your brother shall be
safe.”

Chauvelin was putting the knife to her throat. Marguerite felt herself
entangled in one of those webs, from which she could hope for no escape. A
precious hostage was being held for her obedience: for she knew that this man
would never make an empty threat. No doubt Armand was already signalled to the
Committee of Public Safety as one of the “suspect”; he would not be
allowed to leave France again, and would be ruthlessly struck, if she refused
to obey Chauvelin. For a moment—woman-like—she still hoped to
temporise. She held out her hand to this man, whom she now feared and hated.

“If I promise to help you in this matter, Chauvelin,” she said
pleasantly, “will you give me that letter of St. Just’s?”

“If you render me useful assistance to-night, citoyenne,” he
replied with a sarcastic smile, “I will give you that letter . . .
to-morrow.”

“You do not trust me?”

“I trust you absolutely, dear lady, but St. Just’s life is forfeit
to his country . . . it rests with you to redeem it.”

“I may be powerless to help you,” she pleaded, “were I ever
so willing.”

“That would be terrible indeed,” he said quietly, “for you .
. . and for St. Just.”

Marguerite shuddered. She felt that from this man she could expect no mercy.
All-powerful, he held the beloved life in the hollow of his hand. She knew him
too well not to know that, if he failed in gaining his own ends, he would be
pitiless.

She felt cold in spite of the oppressive air of the opera-house. The
heart-appealing strains of the music seemed to reach her, as from a distant
land. She drew her costly lace scarf up around her shoulders, and sat silently
watching the brilliant scene, as if in a dream.

For a moment her thoughts wandered away from the loved one who was in danger,
to that other man who also had a claim on her confidence and her affection. She
felt lonely, frightened for Armand’s sake; she longed to seek comfort and
advice from someone who would know how to help and console. Sir Percy Blakeney
had loved her once; he was her husband; why should she stand alone through this
terrible ordeal? He had very little brains, it is true, but he had plenty of
muscle: surely, if she provided the thought, and he the manly energy and pluck,
together they could outwit the astute diplomatist, and save the hostage from
his vengeful hands, without imperilling the life of the noble leader of that
gallant little band of heroes. Sir Percy knew St. Just well—he seemed
attached to him—she was sure that he could help.

Chauvelin was taking no further heed of her. He had said his cruel
“Either—or—” and left her to decide. He, in his turn
now, appeared to be absorbed in the soul-stirring melodies of Orpheus,
and was beating time to the music with his sharp, ferret-like head.

A discreet rap at the door roused Marguerite from her thoughts. It was Sir
Percy Blakeney, tall, sleepy, good-humoured, and wearing that half-shy,
half-inane smile, which just now seemed to irritate her every nerve.

“Er . . . your chair is outside . . . m’dear,” he said, with
his most exasperating drawl, “I suppose you will want to go to that
demmed ball. . . . Excuse me—er—Monsieur Chauvelin—I had not
observed you. . . .”

He extended two slender, white fingers towards Chauvelin, who had risen when
Sir Percy entered the box.

“Are you coming, m’dear?”

“Hush! Sh! Sh!” came in angry remonstrance from different parts of
the house.

“Demmed impudence,” commented Sir Percy with a
good-natured smile.

Marguerite sighed impatiently. Her last hope seemed suddenly to have vanished
away. She wrapped her cloak round her and without looking at her husband:

“I am ready to go,” she said, taking his arm. At the door of the
box she turned and looked straight at Chauvelin, who, with his
chapeau-bras under his arm, and a curious smile round his thin lips, was
preparing to follow the strangely ill-assorted couple.

“It is only au revoir, Chauvelin,” she said pleasantly,
“we shall meet at my Lord Grenville’s ball, anon.”

And in her eyes the astute Frenchman read, no doubt, something which caused him
profound satisfaction, for, with a sarcastic smile, he took a delicate pinch of
snuff, then, having dusted his dainty lace jabot, he rubbed his thin, bony
hands contentedly together.

CHAPTER XI.

LORD GRENVILLE’S BALL

The historic ball given by the then Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs—Lord Grenville—was the most brilliant function of the year.
Though the autumn season had only just begun, everybody who was anybody had
contrived to be in London in time to be present there, and to shine at this
ball, to the best of his or her respective ability.

His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales had promised to be present. He was
coming on presently from the opera. Lord Grenville himself had listened to the
two first acts of Orpheus, before preparing to receive his guests. At
ten o’clock—an unusually late hour in those days—the grand
rooms of the Foreign Office, exquisitely decorated with exotic palms and
flowers, were filled to overflowing. One room had been set apart for dancing,
and the dainty strains of the minuet made a soft accompaniment to the gay
chatter, the merry laughter of the numerous and brilliant company.

In a smaller chamber, facing the top of the fine stairway, the distinguished
host stood ready to receive his guests. Distinguished men, beautiful women,
notabilities from every European country had already filed past him, had
exchanged the elaborate bows and curtsies with him, which the extravagant
fashion of the time demanded, and then, laughing and talking, had dispersed in
the ball, reception, and card rooms beyond.

Not far from Lord Grenville’s elbow, leaning against one of the console
tables, Chauvelin, in his irreproachable black costume, was taking a quiet
survey of the brilliant throng. He noted that Sir Percy and Lady Blakeney had
not yet arrived, and his keen, pale eyes glanced quickly towards the door every
time a newcomer appeared.

He stood somewhat isolated: the envoy of the Revolutionary Government of France
was not likely to be very popular in England, at a time when the news of the
awful September massacres, and of the Reign of Terror and Anarchy, had just
begun to filtrate across the Channel.

In his official capacity he had been received courteously by his English
colleagues: Mr. Pitt had shaken him by the hand; Lord Grenville had entertained
him more than once; but the more intimate circles of London society ignored him
altogether; the women openly turned their backs upon him; the men who held no
official position refused to shake his hand.

But Chauvelin was not the man to trouble himself about these social amenities,
which he called mere incidents in his diplomatic career. He was blindly
enthusiastic for the revolutionary cause, he despised all social inequalities,
and he had a burning love for his own country: these three sentiments made him
supremely indifferent to the snubs he received in this fog-ridden, loyalist,
old-fashioned England.

But, above all, Chauvelin had a purpose at heart. He firmly believed that the
French aristocrat was the most bitter enemy of France; he would have wished to
see every one of them annihilated: he was one of those who, during this awful
Reign of Terror, had been the first to utter the historic and ferocious desire
“that aristocrats might have but one head between them, so that it might
be cut off with a single stroke of the guillotine.” And thus he looked
upon every French aristocrat, who had succeeded in escaping from France, as so
much prey of which the guillotine had been unwarrantably cheated. There is no
doubt that those royalist émigrés, once they had managed to cross the
frontier, did their very best to stir up foreign indignation against France.
Plots without end were hatched in England, in Belgium, in Holland, to try and
induce some great power to send troops into revolutionary Paris, to free King
Louis, and to summarily hang the bloodthirsty leaders of that monster republic.

Small wonder, therefore, that the romantic and mysterious personality of the
Scarlet Pimpernel was a source of bitter hatred to Chauvelin. He and the few
young jackanapes under his command, well furnished with money, armed with
boundless daring, and acute cunning, had succeeded in rescuing hundreds of
aristocrats from France. Nine-tenths of the émigrés, who were
fêted at the English court, owed their safety to that man and to his
league.

Chauvelin had sworn to his colleagues in Paris that he would discover the
identity of that meddlesome Englishman, entice him over to France, and then . .
. Chauvelin drew a deep breath of satisfaction at the very thought of seeing
that enigmatic head falling under the knife of the guillotine, as easily as
that of any other man.

Suddenly there was a great stir on the handsome staircase, all conversation
stopped for a moment as the major-domo’s voice outside announced,—

“His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and suite, Sir Percy Blakeney,
Lady Blakeney.”

Lord Grenville went quickly to the door to receive his exalted guest.

The Prince of Wales, dressed in a magnificent court suit of salmon-coloured
velvet richly embroidered with gold, entered with Marguerite Blakeney on his
arm; and on his left Sir Percy, in gorgeous shimmering cream satin, cut in the
extravagant “Incroyable” style, his fair hair free from powder,
priceless lace at his neck and wrists, and the flat chapeau-bras under
his arm.

After the few conventional words of deferential greeting, Lord Grenville said
to his royal guest,—

“Will your Highness permit me to introduce M. Chauvelin, the accredited
agent of the French Government?”

Chauvelin, immediately the Prince entered, had stepped forward, expecting this
introduction. He bowed very low, whilst the Prince returned his salute with a
curt nod of the head.

“Monsieur,” said His Royal Highness coldly, “we will try to
forget the government that sent you, and look upon you merely as our
guest—a private gentleman from France. As such you are welcome,
Monsieur.”

“Monseigneur,” rejoined Chauvelin, bowing once again.
“Madame,” he added, bowing ceremoniously before Marguerite.

“Ah! my little Chauvelin!” she said with unconcerned gaiety, and
extending her tiny hand to him. “Monsieur and I are old friends, your
Royal Highness.”

“Ah, then,” said the Prince, this time very graciously, “you
are doubly welcome, Monsieur.”

“There is someone else I would crave permission to present to your Royal
Highness,” here interposed Lord Grenville.

“Ah! who is it?” asked the Prince.

“Madame la Comtesse de Tournay de Basserive and her family, who have but
recently come from France.”

“By all means!—They are among the lucky ones then!”

Lord Grenville turned in search of the Comtesse, who sat at the further end of
the room.

“Lud love me!” whispered His Royal Highness to Marguerite, as soon
as he had caught sight of the rigid figure of the old lady; “Lud love me!
she looks very virtuous and very melancholy.”

“Faith, your Royal Highness,” she rejoined with a smile,
“virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when it is crushed.”

“Virtue, alas!” sighed the Prince, “is mostly unbecoming to
your charming sex, Madame.”

“Madame la Comtesse de Tournay de Basserive,” said Lord Grenville,
introducing the lady.

“This is a pleasure, Madame; my royal father, as you know, is ever glad
to welcome those of your compatriots whom France has driven from her
shores.”

“Your Royal Highness is ever gracious,” replied the Comtesse with
becoming dignity. Then, indicating her daughter, who stood timidly by her side:
“My daughter Suzanne, Monseigneur,” she said.

“Ah! charming!—charming!” said the Prince, “and now
allow me, Comtesse, to introduce to you, Lady Blakeney, who honours us with her
friendship. You and she will have much to say to one another, I vow. Every
compatriot of Lady Blakeney’s is doubly welcome for her sake . . . her
friends are our friends . . . her enemies, the enemies of England.”

Marguerite’s blue eyes had twinkled with merriment at this gracious
speech from her exalted friend. The Comtesse de Tournay, who lately had so
flagrantly insulted her, was here receiving a public lesson, at which
Marguerite could not help but rejoice. But the Comtesse, for whom respect of
royalty amounted almost to a religion, was too well-schooled in courtly
etiquette to show the slightest sign of embarrassment, as the two ladies
curtsied ceremoniously to one another.

“His Royal Highness is ever gracious, Madame,” said Marguerite,
demurely, and with a wealth of mischief in her twinkling blue eyes, “but
here there is no need for his kind mediation. . . . Your amiable reception of
me at our last meeting still dwells pleasantly in my memory.”

“We poor exiles, Madame,” rejoined the Comtesse, frigidly,
“show our gratitude to England by devotion to the wishes of
Monseigneur.”

“Madame!” said Marguerite, with another ceremonious curtsey.

“Madame,” responded the Comtesse with equal dignity.

The Prince in the meanwhile was saying a few gracious words to the young
Vicomte.

“I am happy to know you, Monsieur le Vicomte,” he said. “I
knew your father well when he was ambassador in London.”

“Ah, Monseigneur!” replied the Vicomte, “I was a leetle boy
then . . . and now I owe the honour of this meeting to our protector, the
Scarlet Pimpernel.”

“Hush!” said the Prince, earnestly and quickly, as he indicated
Chauvelin, who had stood a little on one side throughout the whole of this
little scene, watching Marguerite and the Comtesse with an amused, sarcastic
little smile around his thin lips.

“Nay, Monseigneur,” he said now, as if in direct response to the
Prince’s challenge, “pray do not check this gentleman’s
display of gratitude; the name of that interesting red flower is well known to
me—and to France.”

The Prince looked at him keenly for a moment or two.

“Faith, then, Monsieur,” he said, “perhaps you know more
about our national hero than we do ourselves . . . perchance you know who he
is. . . . See!” he added, turning to the groups round the room,
“the ladies hang upon your lips . . . you would render yourself popular
among the fair sex if you were to gratify their curiosity.”

“Ah, Monseigneur,” said Chauvelin, significantly, “rumour has
it in France that your Highness could—an you would—give the truest
account of that enigmatical wayside flower.”

He looked quickly and keenly at Marguerite as he spoke; but she betrayed no
emotion, and her eyes met his quite fearlessly.

“Nay, man,” replied the Prince, “my lips are sealed! and the
members of the league jealously guard the secret of their chief . . . so his
fair adorers have to be content with worshipping a shadow. Here in England,
Monsieur,” he added, with wonderful charm and dignity, “we but name
the Scarlet Pimpernel, and every fair cheek is suffused with a blush of
enthusiasm. None have seen him save his faithful lieutenants. We know not if he
be tall or short, fair or dark, handsome or ill-formed; but we know that he is
the bravest gentleman in all the world, and we all feel a little proud,
Monsieur, when we remember that he is an Englishman.”

“Ah, Monsieur Chauvelin,” added Marguerite, looking almost with
defiance across at the placid, sphinx-like face of the Frenchman, “His
Royal Highness should add that we ladies think of him as of a hero of old . . .
we worship him . . . we wear his badge . . . we tremble for him when he is in
danger, and exult with him in the hour of his victory.”

Chauvelin did no more than bow placidly both to the Prince and to Marguerite;
he felt that both speeches were intended—each in their way—to
convey contempt or defiance. The pleasure-loving, idle Prince he despised; the
beautiful woman, who in her golden hair wore a spray of small red flowers
composed of rubies and diamonds—her he held in the hollow of his hand: he
could afford to remain silent and to await events.

A long, jovial, inane laugh broke the sudden silence which had fallen over
everyone.

“And we poor husbands,” came in slow, affected
accents from gorgeous Sir Percy, “we have to stand by . . . while they
worship a demmed shadow.”

Everyone laughed—the Prince more loudly than anyone. The tension of
subdued excitement was relieved, and the next moment everyone was laughing and
chatting merrily as the gay crowd broke up and dispersed in the adjoining
rooms.

CHAPTER XII.

THE SCRAP OF PAPER

Marguerite suffered intensely. Though she laughed and chatted, though she was
more admired, more surrounded, more fêted than any woman there, she felt
like one condemned to death, living her last day upon this earth.

Her nerves were in a state of painful tension, which had increased a
hundredfold during that brief hour which she had spent in her husband’s
company, between the opera and the ball. The short ray of hope—that she
might find in this good-natured, lazy individual a valuable friend and
adviser—had vanished as quickly as it had come, the moment she found
herself alone with him. The same feeling of good-humoured contempt which one
feels for an animal or a faithful servant, made her turn away with a smile from
the man who should have been her moral support in this heart-rending crisis
through which she was passing: who should have been her cool-headed adviser,
when feminine sympathy and sentiment tossed her hither and thither, between her
love for her brother, who was far away and in mortal peril, and horror of the
awful service which Chauvelin had exacted from her, in exchange for
Armand’s safety.

There he stood, the moral support, the cool-headed adviser, surrounded by a
crowd of brainless, empty-headed young fops, who were even now repeating from
mouth to mouth, and with every sign of the keenest enjoyment, a doggerel
quatrain which he had just given forth.

Everywhere the absurd, silly words met her: people seemed to have little else
to speak about, even the Prince had asked her, with a laugh, whether she
appreciated her husband’s latest poetic efforts.

“All done in the tying of a cravat,” Sir Percy had declared to his
clique of admirers.

“We seek him here, we seek him there,

Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.

Is he in heaven?—Is he in hell?

That demmed, elusive Pimpernel?”

Sir Percy’s bon mot had gone the round of the brilliant
reception-rooms. The Prince was enchanted. He vowed that life without Blakeney
would be but a dreary desert. Then, taking him by the arm, had led him to the
card-room, and engaged him in a long game of hazard.

Sir Percy, whose chief interest in most social gatherings seemed to centre
round the card-table, usually allowed his wife to flirt, dance, to amuse or
bore herself as much as she liked. And to-night, having delivered himself of
his bon mot, he had left Marguerite surrounded by a crowd of admirers of
all ages, all anxious and willing to help her to forget that somewhere in the
spacious reception-rooms, there was a long, lazy being who had been fool enough
to suppose that the cleverest woman in Europe would settle down to the prosaic
bonds of English matrimony.

Her still overwrought nerves, her excitement and agitation, lent beautiful
Marguerite Blakeney much additional charm: escorted by a veritable bevy of men
of all ages and of most nationalities, she called forth many exclamations of
admiration from everyone as she passed.

She would not allow herself any more time to think. Her early, somewhat
Bohemian training had made her something of a fatalist. She felt that events
would shape themselves, that the directing of them was not in her hands. From
Chauvelin she knew that she could expect no mercy. He had set a price upon
Armand’s head, and left it to her to pay or not, as she chose.

Later on in the evening she caught sight of Sir Andrew Ffoulkes and Lord Antony
Dewhurst, who seemingly had just arrived. She noticed at once that Sir Andrew
immediately made for little Suzanne de Tournay, and that the two young people
soon managed to isolate themselves in one of the deep embrasures of the
mullioned windows, there to carry on a long conversation, which seemed very
earnest and very pleasant on both sides.

Both the young men looked a little haggard and anxious, but otherwise they were
irreproachably dressed, and there was not the slightest sign, about their
courtly demeanour, of the terrible catastrophe, which they must have felt
hovering round them and round their chief.

That the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel had no intention of abandoning its
cause, she had gathered through little Suzanne herself, who spoke openly of the
assurance she and her mother had had that the Comte de Tournay would be rescued
from France by the league, within the next few days. Vaguely she began to
wonder, as she looked at the brilliant and fashionable crowd in the
gaily-lighted ball-room, which of these worldly men round her was the
mysterious “Scarlet Pimpernel,” who held the threads of such daring
plots, and the fate of valuable lives in his hands.

A burning curiosity seized her to know him: although for months she had heard
of him and had accepted his anonymity, as everyone else in society had done;
but now she longed to know—quite impersonally, quite apart from Armand,
and oh! quite apart from Chauvelin—only for her own sake, for the sake of
the enthusiastic admiration she had always bestowed on his bravery and cunning.

He was at the ball, of course, somewhere, since Sir Andrew Ffoulkes and Lord
Antony Dewhurst were here, evidently expecting to meet their chief—and
perhaps to get a fresh mot d’ordre from him.

Marguerite looked round at everyone, at the aristocratic high-typed Norman
faces, the squarely-built, fair-haired Saxon, the more gentle, humorous caste
of the Celt, wondering which of these betrayed the power, the energy, the
cunning which had imposed its will and its leadership upon a number of
high-born English gentlemen, among whom rumour asserted was His Royal Highness
himself.

Sir Andrew Ffoulkes? Surely not, with his gentle blue eyes, which were looking
so tenderly and longingly after little Suzanne, who was being led away from the
pleasant tête-à-tête by her stern mother. Marguerite watched him across
the room, as he finally turned away with a sigh, and seemed to stand, aimless
and lonely, now that Suzanne’s dainty little figure had disappeared in
the crowd.

She watched him as he strolled towards the doorway, which led to a small
boudoir beyond, then paused and leaned against the framework of it, looking
still anxiously all round him.

Marguerite contrived for the moment to evade her present attentive cavalier,
and she skirted the fashionable crowd, drawing nearer to the doorway, against
which Sir Andrew was leaning. Why she wished to get closer to him, she could
not have said: perhaps she was impelled by an all-powerful fatality, which so
often seems to rule the destinies of men.

Suddenly she stopped: her very heart seemed to stand still, her eyes, large and
excited, flashed for a moment towards that doorway, then as quickly were turned
away again. Sir Andrew Ffoulkes was still in the same listless position by the
door, but Marguerite had distinctly seen that Lord Hastings—a young buck,
a friend of her husband’s and one of the Prince’s set—had, as
he quickly brushed past him, slipped something into his hand.

For one moment longer—oh! it was the merest flash—Marguerite
paused: the next she had, with admirably played unconcern, resumed her walk
across the room—but this time more quickly towards that doorway whence
Sir Andrew had now disappeared.

All this, from the moment that Marguerite had caught sight of Sir Andrew
leaning against the doorway, until she followed him into the little boudoir
beyond, had occurred in less than a minute. Fate is usually swift when she
deals a blow.

Now Lady Blakeney had suddenly ceased to exist. It was Marguerite St. Just who
was there only: Marguerite St. Just who had passed her childhood, her early
youth, in the protecting arms of her brother Armand. She had forgotten
everything else—her rank, her dignity, her secret
enthusiasms—everything save that Armand stood in peril of his life, and
that there, not twenty feet away from her, in the small boudoir which was quite
deserted, in the very hands of Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, might be the talisman which
would save her brother’s life.

Barely another thirty seconds had elapsed between the moment when Lord Hastings
slipped the mysterious “something” into Sir Andrew’s hand,
and the one when she, in her turn, reached the deserted boudoir. Sir Andrew was
standing with his back to her and close to a table upon which stood a massive
silver candelabra. A slip of paper was in his hand, and he was in the very act
of perusing its contents.

Unperceived, her soft clinging robe making not the slightest sound upon the
heavy carpet, not daring to breathe until she had accomplished her purpose,
Marguerite slipped close behind him. . . . At that moment he looked round and
saw her; she uttered a groan, passed her hand across her forehead, and murmured
faintly,—

“The heat in the room was terrible . . . I felt so faint. . . . Ah! . .
.”

She tottered almost as if she would fall, and Sir Andrew, quickly recovering
himself, and crumpling in his hand the tiny note he had been reading, was only,
apparently, just in time to support her.

“You are ill, Lady Blakeney?” he asked with much concern.
“Let me . . .”

“No, no, nothing—” she interrupted quickly. “A
chair—quick.”

She sank into a chair close to the table, and throwing back her head, closed
her eyes.

“There!” she murmured, still faintly; “the giddiness is
passing off. . . . Do not heed me, Sir Andrew; I assure you I already feel
better.”

At moments like these there is no doubt—and psychologists actually assert
it—that there is in us a sense which has absolutely nothing to do with
the other five: it is not that we see, it is not that we hear or touch, yet we
seem to do all three at once. Marguerite sat there with her eyes apparently
closed. Sir Andrew was immediately behind her, and on her right was the table
with the five-armed candelabra upon it. Before her mental vision there was
absolutely nothing but Armand’s face. Armand, whose life was in the most
imminent danger, and who seemed to be looking at her from a background upon
which were dimly painted the seething crowd of Paris, the bare walls of the
Tribunal of Public Safety, with Foucquier-Tinville, the Public Prosecutor,
demanding Armand’s life in the name of the people of France, and the
lurid guillotine with its stained knife waiting for another victim . . .
Armand! . . .

For one moment there was dead silence in the little boudoir. Beyond, from the
brilliant ball-room, the sweet notes of the gavotte, the frou-frou of rich
dresses, the talk and laughter of a large and merry crowd, came as a strange,
weird accompaniment to the drama which was being enacted here.

Sir Andrew had not uttered another word. Then it was that that extra
sense became potent in Marguerite Blakeney. She could not see, for her eyes
were closed; she could not hear, for the noise from the ball-room drowned the
soft rustle of that momentous scrap of paper; nevertheless she knew—as if
she had both seen and heard—that Sir Andrew was even now holding the
paper to the flame of one of the candles.

At the exact moment that it began to catch fire, she opened her eyes, raised
her hand and, with two dainty fingers, had taken the burning scrap of paper
from the young man’s hand. Then she blew out the flame, and held the
paper to her nostril with perfect unconcern.

“How thoughtful of you, Sir Andrew,” she said gaily, “surely
’twas your grandmother who taught you that the smell of burnt paper was a
sovereign remedy against giddiness.”

She sighed with satisfaction, holding the paper tightly between her jewelled
fingers; that talisman which perhaps would save her brother Armand’s
life. Sir Andrew was staring at her, too dazed for the moment to realise what
had actually happened; he had been taken so completely by surprise, that he
seemed quite unable to grasp the fact that the slip of paper, which she held in
her dainty hand, was one perhaps on which the life of his comrade might depend.

Marguerite burst into a long, merry peal of laughter.

“Why do you stare at me like that?” she said playfully. “I
assure you I feel much better; your remedy has proved most effectual. This room
is most delightfully cool,” she added, with the same perfect composure,
“and the sound of the gavotte from the ball-room is fascinating and
soothing.”

She was prattling on in the most unconcerned and pleasant way, whilst Sir
Andrew, in an agony of mind, was racking his brains as to the quickest method
he could employ to get that bit of paper out of that beautiful woman’s
hand. Instinctively, vague and tumultuous thoughts rushed through his mind: he
suddenly remembered her nationality, and worst of all, recollected that
horrible tale anent the Marquis de St. Cyr, which in England no one had
credited, for the sake of Sir Percy, as well as for her own.

“What? Still dreaming and staring?” she said, with a merry laugh,
“you are most ungallant, Sir Andrew; and now I come to think of it, you
seemed more startled than pleased when you saw me just now. I do believe, after
all, that it was not concern for my health, nor yet a remedy taught you by your
grandmother that caused you to burn this tiny scrap of paper. . . . I vow it
must have been your lady love’s last cruel epistle you were trying to
destroy. Now confess!” she added, playfully holding up the scrap of
paper, “does this contain her final congé, or a last appeal to
kiss and make friends?”

“Whichever it is, Lady Blakeney,” said Sir Andrew, who was
gradually recovering his self-possession, “this little note is
undoubtedly mine, and . . .”

Not caring whether his action was
one that would be styled ill-bred towards a lady, the young man had made a bold
dash for the note; but Marguerite’s thoughts flew quicker than his own;
her actions, under pressure of this intense excitement, were swifter and more
sure. She was tall and strong; she took a quick step backwards and knocked over
the small Sheraton table which was already top-heavy, and which fell down with
a crash, together with the massive candelabra upon it.

She gave a quick cry of alarm:

“The candles, Sir Andrew—quick!”

There was not much damage done; one or two of the candles had blown out as the
candelabra fell; others had merely sent some grease upon the valuable carpet;
one had ignited the paper shade over it. Sir Andrew quickly and dexterously put
out the flames and replaced the candelabra upon the table; but this had taken
him a few seconds to do, and those seconds had been all that Marguerite needed
to cast a quick glance at the paper, and to note its contents—a dozen
words in the same distorted handwriting she had seen before, and bearing the
same device—a star-shaped flower drawn in red ink.

When Sir Andrew once more looked at her, he only saw on her face alarm at the
untoward accident and relief at its happy issue; whilst the tiny and momentous
note had apparently fluttered to the ground. Eagerly the young man picked it
up, and his face looked much relieved, as his fingers closed tightly over it.

“For shame, Sir Andrew,” she said, shaking her head with a playful
sigh, “making havoc in the heart of some impressionable duchess, whilst
conquering the affections of my sweet little Suzanne. Well, well! I do believe
it was Cupid himself who stood by you, and threatened the entire Foreign Office
with destruction by fire, just on purpose to make me drop love’s message,
before it had been polluted by my indiscreet eyes. To think that, a moment
longer, and I might have known the secrets of an erring duchess.”

“You will forgive me, Lady Blakeney,” said Sir Andrew, now as calm
as she was herself, “if I resume the interesting occupation which you had
interrupted?”

“By all means, Sir Andrew! How should I venture to thwart the love-god
again? Perhaps he would mete out some terrible chastisement against my
presumption. Burn your love-token, by all means!”

Sir Andrew had already twisted the paper into a long spill, and was once again
holding it to the flame of the candle, which had remained alight. He did not
notice the strange smile on the face of his fair vis-à-vis, so intent
was he on the work of destruction; perhaps, had he done so, the look of relief
would have faded from his face. He watched the fateful note, as it curled under
the flame. Soon the last fragment fell on the floor, and he placed his heel
upon the ashes.

“And now, Sir Andrew,” said Marguerite Blakeney, with the pretty
nonchalance peculiar to herself, and with the most winning of smiles,
“will you venture to excite the jealousy of your fair lady by asking me
to dance the minuet?”

CHAPTER XIII.

EITHER—OR?

The few words which Marguerite Blakeney had managed to read on the
half-scorched piece of paper, seemed literally to be the words of Fate.
“Start myself to-morrow. . . .” This she had read quite distinctly;
then came a blur caused by the smoke of the candle, which obliterated the next
few words; but, right at the bottom, there was another sentence, which was now
standing clearly and distinctly, like letters of fire, before her mental
vision. “If you wish to speak to me again, I shall be in the supper-room
at one o’clock precisely.” The whole was signed with the
hastily-scrawled little device—a tiny star-shaped flower, which had
become so familiar to her.

One o’clock precisely! It was now close upon eleven, the last minuet was
being danced, with Sir Andrew Ffoulkes and beautiful Lady Blakeney leading the
couples, through its delicate and intricate figures.

Close upon eleven! the hands of the handsome Louis XV. clock upon its ormolu
bracket seemed to move along with maddening rapidity. Two hours more, and her
fate and that of Armand would be sealed. In two hours she must make up her mind
whether she will keep the knowledge so cunningly gained to herself, and leave
her brother to his fate, or whether she will wilfully betray a brave man, whose
life was devoted to his fellow-men, who was noble, generous, and above all,
unsuspecting. It seemed a horrible thing to do. But then, there was Armand!
Armand, too, was noble and brave, Armand, too, was unsuspecting. And Armand
loved her, would have willingly trusted his life in her hands, and now, when
she could save him from death, she hesitated. Oh! it was monstrous; her
brother’s kind, gentle face, so full of love for her, seemed to be
looking reproachfully at her. “You might have saved me, Margot!” he
seemed to say to her, “and you chose the life of a stranger, a man you do
not know, whom you have never seen, and preferred that he should be safe,
whilst you sent me to the guillotine!”

All these conflicting thoughts raged through Marguerite’s brain, while,
with a smile upon her lips, she glided through the graceful mazes of the
minuet. She noted—with that acute sense of hers—that she had
succeeded in completely allaying Sir Andrew’s fears. Her self-control had
been absolutely perfect—she was a finer actress at this moment, and
throughout the whole of this minuet, than she had ever been upon the boards of
the Comédie Française; but then, a beloved brother’s life had not
depended upon her histrionic powers.

She was too clever to overdo her part, and made no further allusions to the
supposed billet doux, which had caused Sir Andrew Ffoulkes such an
agonising five minutes. She watched his anxiety melting away under her sunny
smile, and soon perceived that, whatever doubt may have crossed his mind at the
moment, she had, by the time the last bars of the minuet had been played,
succeeded in completely dispelling it; he never realised in what a fever of
excitement she was, what effort it cost her to keep up a constant ripple of
banal conversation.

When the minuet was over, she asked Sir Andrew to take her into the next room.

“I have promised to go down to supper with His Royal Highness,” she
said, “but before we part, tell me . . . am I forgiven?”

“Forgiven?”

“Yes! Confess, I gave you a fright just now. . . . But, remember, I am
not an Englishwoman, and I do not look upon the exchanging of billet
doux as a crime, and I vow I’ll not tell my little Suzanne. But now,
tell me, shall I welcome you at my water-party on Wednesday?”

“I am not sure, Lady Blakeney,” he replied evasively. “I may
have to leave London to-morrow.”

“I would not do that, if I were you,” she said earnestly; then
seeing the anxious look once more reappearing in his eyes, she added gaily;
“No one can throw a ball better than you can, Sir Andrew, we should so
miss you on the bowling-green.”

He had led her across the room, to one beyond, where already His Royal Highness
was waiting for the beautiful Lady Blakeney.

“Madame, supper awaits us,” said the Prince, offering his arm to
Marguerite, “and I am full of hope. The goddess Fortune has frowned so
persistently on me at hazard, that I look with confidence for the smiles of the
goddess of Beauty.”

“Your Highness has been unfortunate at the card tables?” asked
Marguerite, as she took the Prince’s arm.

“Aye! most unfortunate. Blakeney, not content with being the richest
among my father’s subjects, has also the most outrageous luck. By the
way, where is that inimitable wit? I vow, Madam, that this life would be but a
dreary desert without your smiles and his sallies.”

CHAPTER XIV.

ONE O’CLOCK PRECISELY!

Supper had been extremely gay. All those present declared that never had Lady
Blakeney been more adorable, nor that “demmed idiot” Sir Percy more
amusing.

His Royal Highness had laughed until the tears streamed down his cheeks at
Blakeney’s foolish yet funny repartees. His doggerel verse, “We
seek him here, we seek him there,” etc., was sung to the tune of
“Ho! Merry Britons!” and to the accompaniment of glasses knocked
loudly against the table. Lord Grenville, moreover, had a most perfect
cook—some wags asserted that he was a scion of the old French
noblesse, who, having lost his fortune, had come to seek it in the
cuisine of the Foreign Office.

Marguerite Blakeney was in her most brilliant mood, and surely not a soul in
that crowded supper-room had even an inkling of the terrible struggle which was
raging within her heart.

The clock was ticking so mercilessly on. It was long past midnight, and even
the Prince of Wales was thinking of leaving the supper-table. Within the next
half-hour the destinies of two brave men would be pitted against one
another—the dearly-beloved brother and he, the unknown hero.

Marguerite had not even tried to see Chauvelin during this last hour; she knew
that his keen, fox-like eyes would terrify her at once, and incline the balance
of her decision towards Armand. Whilst she did not see him, there still
lingered in her heart of hearts a vague, undefined hope that
“something” would occur, something big, enormous, epoch-making,
which would shift from her young, weak shoulders this terrible burden of
responsibility, of having to choose between two such cruel alternatives.

But the minutes ticked on with that dull monotony which they invariably seem to
assume when our very nerves ache with their incessant ticking.

After supper, dancing was resumed. His Royal Highness had left, and there was
general talk of departing among the older guests; the young ones were
indefatigable and had started on a new gavotte, which would fill the next
quarter of an hour.

Marguerite did not feel equal to another dance; there is a limit to the most
enduring self-control. Escorted by a Cabinet Minister, she had once more found
her way to the tiny boudoir, still the most deserted among all the rooms. She
knew that Chauvelin must be lying in wait for her somewhere, ready to seize the
first possible opportunity for a tête-à-tête. His eyes had met hers for
a moment after the ’fore-supper minuet, and she knew that the keen
diplomatist, with those searching pale eyes of his, had divined that her work
was accomplished.

Fate had willed it so. Marguerite, torn by the most terrible conflict heart of
woman can ever know, had resigned herself to its decrees. But Armand must be
saved at any cost; he, first of all, for he was her brother, had been mother,
father, friend to her ever since she, a tiny babe, had lost both her parents.
To think of Armand dying a traitor’s death on the guillotine was too
horrible even to dwell upon—impossible, in fact. That could never be,
never. . . . As for the stranger, the hero . . . well! there, let Fate decide.
Marguerite would redeem her brother’s life at the hands of the relentless
enemy, then let that cunning Scarlet Pimpernel extricate himself after that.

Perhaps—vaguely—Marguerite hoped that the daring plotter, who for
so many months had baffled an army of spies, would still manage to evade
Chauvelin and remain immune to the end.

She thought of all this, as she sat listening to the witty discourse of the
Cabinet Minister, who, no doubt, felt that he had found in Lady Blakeney a most
perfect listener. Suddenly she saw the keen, fox-like face of Chauvelin peeping
through the curtained doorway.

“Lord Fancourt,” she said to the Minister, “will you do me a
service?”

“I am entirely at your ladyship’s service,” he replied
gallantly.

“Will you see if my husband is still in the card-room? And if he is, will
you tell him that I am very tired, and would be glad to go home soon.”

The commands of a beautiful woman are binding on all mankind, even on Cabinet
Ministers. Lord Fancourt prepared to obey instantly.

“I do not like to leave your ladyship alone,” he said.

“Never fear. I shall be quite safe here—and, I think, undisturbed .
. . but I am really tired. You know Sir Percy will drive back to Richmond. It
is a long way, and we shall not—an we do not hurry—get home before
daybreak.”

Lord Fancourt had perforce to go.

The moment he had disappeared, Chauvelin slipped into the room, and the next
instant stood calm and impassive by her side.

“You have news for me?” he said.

An icy mantle seemed to have suddenly settled round Marguerite’s
shoulders; though her cheeks glowed with fire, she felt chilled and numbed. Oh,
Armand! will you ever know the terrible sacrifice of pride, of dignity, of
womanliness a devoted sister is making for your sake?

“Nothing of importance,” she said, staring mechanically before her,
“but it might prove a clue. I contrived—no matter how—to
detect Sir Andrew Ffoulkes in the very act of burning a paper at one of these
candles, in this very room. That paper I succeeded in holding between my
fingers for the space of two minutes, and to cast my eye on it for that of ten
seconds.”

“Time enough to learn its contents?” asked Chauvelin, quietly.

She nodded. Then she continued in the same even, mechanical tone of
voice—

“In the corner of the paper there was the usual rough device of a small
star-shaped flower. Above it I read two lines, everything else was scorched and
blackened by the flame.”

“And what were these two lines?”

Her throat seemed suddenly to have contracted. For an instant she felt that she
could not speak the words, which might send a brave man to his death.

“It is lucky that the whole paper was not burned,” added Chauvelin,
with dry sarcasm, “for it might have fared ill with Armand St. Just. What
were the two lines, citoyenne?”

“One was, ‘I start myself to-morrow,’” she said
quietly; “the other—‘If you wish to speak to me, I shall be
in the supper-room at one o’clock precisely.’”

Chauvelin looked up at the clock just above the mantelpiece.

“Then I have plenty of time,” he said placidly.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

She was pale as a statue, her hands were icy cold, her head and heart throbbed
with the awful strain upon her nerves. Oh, this was cruel! cruel! What had she
done to have deserved all this? Her choice was made: had she done a vile action
or one that was sublime? The recording angel, who writes in the book of gold,
alone could give an answer.

“What are you going to do?” she repeated mechanically.

“Oh, nothing for the present. After that it will depend.”

“On what?”

“On whom I shall see in the supper-room at one o’clock
precisely.”

“You will see the Scarlet Pimpernel, of course. But you do not know
him.”

“No. But I shall presently.”

“Sir Andrew will have warned him.”

“I think not. When you parted from him after the minuet he stood and
watched you, for a moment or two, with a look which gave me to understand that
something had happened between you. It was only natural, was it not? that I
should make a shrewd guess as to the nature of that ‘something.’ I
thereupon engaged the young gallant in a long and animated
conversation—we discussed Herr Glück’s singular success in
London—until a lady claimed his arm for supper.”

“Since then?”

“I did not lose sight of him through supper. When we all came upstairs
again, Lady Portarles buttonholed him and started on the subject of pretty
Mlle. Suzanne de Tournay. I knew he would not move until Lady Portarles had
exhausted the subject, which will not be for another quarter of an hour at
least, and it is five minutes to one now.”

He was preparing to go, and went up to the doorway, where, drawing aside the
curtain, he stood for a moment pointing out to Marguerite the distant figure of
Sir Andrew Ffoulkes in close conversation with Lady Portarles.

“I think,” he said, with a triumphant smile, “that I may
safely expect to find the person I seek in the dining-room, fair lady.”

“There may be more than one.”

“Whoever is there, as the clock strikes one, will be shadowed by one of
my men; of these, one, or perhaps two, or even three, will leave for France
to-morrow. One of these will be the ‘Scarlet
Pimpernel.’”

“Yes?—And?”

“I also, fair lady, will leave for France to-morrow. The papers found at
Dover upon the person of Sir Andrew Ffoulkes speak of the neighbourhood of
Calais, of an inn which I know well, called ‘Le Chat Gris,’ of a
lonely place somewhere on the coast—the Père Blanchard’s
hut—which I must endeavour to find. All these places are given as the
point where this meddlesome Englishman has bidden the traitor de Tournay and
others to meet his emissaries. But it seems that he has decided not to send his
emissaries, that ‘he will start himself to-morrow.’ Now, one of
those persons whom I shall see anon in the supper-room, will be journeying to
Calais, and I shall follow that person, until I have tracked him to where those
fugitive aristocrats await him; for that person, fair lady, will be the man
whom I have sought for, for nearly a year, the man whose energy has outdone me,
whose ingenuity has baffled me, whose audacity has set me wondering—yes!
me!—who have seen a trick or two in my time—the mysterious and
elusive Scarlet Pimpernel.”

“And Armand?” she pleaded.

“Have I ever broken my word? I promise you that the day the Scarlet
Pimpernel and I start for France, I will send you that imprudent letter of his
by special courier. More than that, I will pledge you the word of France, that
the day I lay hands on that meddlesome Englishman, St. Just will be here in
England, safe in the arms of his charming sister.”

And with a deep and elaborate bow and another look at the clock, Chauvelin
glided out of the room.

It seemed to Marguerite that through all the noise, all the din of music,
dancing, and laughter, she could hear his cat-like tread, gliding through the
vast reception-rooms; that she could hear him go down the massive staircase,
reach the dining-room and open the door. Fate had decided, had made her
speak, had made her do a vile and abominable thing, for the sake of the brother
she loved. She lay back in her chair, passive and still, seeing the figure of
her relentless enemy ever present before her aching eyes.

When Chauvelin reached the supper-room it was quite deserted. It had that
woebegone, forsaken, tawdry appearance, which reminds one so much of a
ball-dress, the morning after.

Half-empty glasses littered the table, unfolded napkins lay about, the
chairs—turned towards one another in groups of twos and
threes—seemed like the seats of ghosts, in close conversation with one
another. There were sets of two chairs—very close to one another—in
the far corners of the room, which spoke of recent whispered flirtations, over
cold game-pie and champagne; there were sets of three and four chairs, that
recalled pleasant, animated discussions over the latest scandals; there were
chairs straight up in a row that still looked starchy, critical, acid, like
antiquated dowagers; there were a few isolated, single chairs, close to the
table, that spoke of gourmands intent on the most recherché dishes, and
others overturned on the floor, that spoke volumes on the subject of my Lord
Grenville’s cellars.

It was a ghostlike replica, in fact, of that fashionable gathering upstairs; a
ghost that haunts every house where balls and good suppers are given; a picture
drawn with white chalk on grey cardboard, dull and colourless, now that the
bright silk dresses and gorgeously embroidered coats were no longer there to
fill in the foreground, and now that the candles flickered sleepily in their
sockets.

Chauvelin smiled benignly, and rubbing his long, thin hands together, he looked
round the deserted supper-room, whence even the last flunkey had retired in
order to join his friends in the hall below. All was silence in the
dimly-lighted room, whilst the sound of the gavotte, the hum of distant talk
and laughter, and the rumble of an occasional coach outside, only seemed to
reach this palace of the Sleeping Beauty as the murmur of some flitting spooks
far away.

It all looked so peaceful, so luxurious, and so still, that the keenest
observer—a veritable prophet—could never have guessed that, at this
present moment, that deserted supper-room was nothing but a trap laid for the
capture of the most cunning and audacious plotter those stirring times had ever
seen.

Chauvelin pondered and tried to peer into the immediate future. What would this
man be like, whom he and the leaders of a whole revolution had sworn to bring
to his death? Everything about him was weird and mysterious; his personality,
which he had so cunningly concealed, the power he wielded over nineteen English
gentlemen who seemed to obey his every command blindly and enthusiastically,
the passionate love and submission he had roused in his little trained band,
and, above all, his marvellous audacity, the boundless impudence which had
caused him to beard his most implacable enemies, within the very walls of
Paris.

No wonder that in France the sobriquet of the mysterious Englishman
roused in the people a superstitious shudder. Chauvelin himself as he gazed
round the deserted room, where presently the weird hero would appear, felt a
strange feeling of awe creeping all down his spine.

But his plans were well laid. He felt sure that the Scarlet Pimpernel had not
been warned, and felt equally sure that Marguerite Blakeney had not played him
false. If she had . . . a cruel look, that would have made her shudder, gleamed
in Chauvelin’s keen, pale eyes. If she had played him a trick, Armand St.
Just would suffer the extreme penalty.

But no, no! of course she had not played him false!

Fortunately the supper-room was deserted: this would make Chauvelin’s
task all the easier, when presently that unsuspecting enigma would enter it
alone. No one was here now save Chauvelin himself.

Stay! as he surveyed with a satisfied smile the solitude of the room, the
cunning agent of the French Government became aware of the peaceful, monotonous
breathing of some one of my Lord Grenville’s guests, who, no doubt, had
supped both wisely and well, and was enjoying a quiet sleep, away from the din
of the dancing above.

Chauvelin looked round once more, and there in the corner of a sofa, in the
dark angle of the room, his mouth open, his eyes shut, the sweet sounds of
peaceful slumbers proceeding from his nostrils, reclined the
gorgeously-apparelled, long-limbed husband of the cleverest woman in Europe.

Chauvelin looked at him as he lay there, placid, unconscious, at peace with all
the world and himself, after the best of suppers, and a smile, that was almost
one of pity, softened for a moment the hard lines of the Frenchman’s face
and the sarcastic twinkle of his pale eyes.

Evidently the slumberer, deep in dreamless sleep, would not interfere with
Chauvelin’s trap for catching that cunning Scarlet Pimpernel. Again he
rubbed his hands together, and, following the example of Sir Percy Blakeney,
he, too, stretched himself out in the corner of another sofa, shut his eyes,
opened his mouth, gave forth sounds of peaceful breathing, and . . . waited!

CHAPTER XV.

DOUBT

Marguerite Blakeney had watched the slight sable-clad figure of Chauvelin, as
he worked his way through the ball-room. Then perforce she had had to wait,
while her nerves tingled with excitement.

Listlessly she sat in the small, still deserted boudoir, looking out through
the curtained doorway on the dancing couples beyond: looking at them, yet
seeing nothing, hearing the music, yet conscious of naught save a feeling of
expectancy, of anxious, weary waiting.

Her mind conjured up before her the vision of what was, perhaps at this very
moment, passing downstairs. The half-deserted dining-room, the fateful
hour—Chauvelin on the watch!—then, precise to the moment, the
entrance of a man, he, the Scarlet Pimpernel, the mysterious leader, who to
Marguerite had become almost unreal, so strange, so weird was this hidden
identity.

She wished she were in the supper-room, too, at this moment, watching him as he
entered; she knew that her woman’s penetration would at once recognise in
the stranger’s face—whoever he might be—that strong
individuality which belongs to a leader of men—to a hero: to the mighty,
high-soaring eagle, whose daring wings were becoming entangled in the
ferret’s trap.

Woman-like, she thought of him with unmixed sadness; the irony of that fate
seemed so cruel which allowed the fearless lion to succumb to the gnawing of a
rat! Ah! had Armand’s life not been at stake! . . .

“Faith! your ladyship must have thought me very remiss,” said a
voice suddenly, close to her elbow. “I had a deal of difficulty in
delivering your message, for I could not find Blakeney anywhere at first . .
.”

Marguerite had forgotten all about her husband and her message to him; his very
name, as spoken by Lord Fancourt, sounded strange and unfamiliar to her, so
completely had she in the last five minutes lived her old life in the Rue de
Richelieu again, with Armand always near her to love and protect her, to guard
her from the many subtle intrigues which were forever raging in Paris in those
days.

“I did find him at last,” continued Lord Fancourt, “and gave
him your message. He said that he would give orders at once for the horses to
be put to.”

“Ah!” she said, still very absently, “you found my husband,
and gave him my message?”

“Yes; he was in the dining-room fast asleep. I could not manage to wake
him up at first.”

“Thank you very much,” she said mechanically, trying to collect her
thoughts.

“Will your ladyship honour me with the contredanse until your
coach is ready?” asked Lord Fancourt.

“No, I thank you, my lord, but—and you will forgive me—I
really am too tired, and the heat in the ball-room has become
oppressive.”

“The conservatory is deliciously cool; let me take you there, and then
get you something. You seem ailing, Lady Blakeney.”

“I am only very tired,” she repeated wearily, as she allowed Lord
Fancourt to lead her, where subdued lights and green plants lent coolness to
the air. He got her a chair, into which she sank. This long interval of waiting
was intolerable. Why did not Chauvelin come and tell her the result of his
watch?

Lord Fancourt was very attentive. She scarcely heard what he said, and suddenly
startled him by asking abruptly,—

“Lord Fancourt, did you perceive who was in the dining-room just now
besides Sir Percy Blakeney?”

“Only the agent of the French Government, M. Chauvelin, equally fast
asleep in another corner,” he said. “Why does your ladyship
ask?”

“I know not . . . I . . . Did you notice the time when you were
there?”

“It must have been about five or ten minutes past one. . . . I wonder
what your ladyship is thinking about,” he added, for evidently the fair
lady’s thoughts were very far away, and she had not been listening to his
intellectual conversation.

But indeed her thoughts were not very far away: only one storey below, in this
same house, in the dining-room where sat Chauvelin still on the watch. Had he
failed? For one instant that possibility rose before her as a hope—the
hope that the Scarlet Pimpernel had been warned by Sir Andrew, and that
Chauvelin’s trap had failed to catch his bird; but that hope soon gave
way to fear. Had he failed? But then—Armand!

Lord Fancourt had given up talking since he found that he had no listener. He
wanted an opportunity for slipping away: for sitting opposite to a lady,
however fair, who is evidently not heeding the most vigorous efforts made for
her entertainment, is not exhilarating, even to a Cabinet Minister.

“Shall I find out if your ladyship’s coach is ready,” he said
at last, tentatively.

“Oh, thank you . . . thank you . . . if you would be so kind . . . I fear
I am but sorry company . . . but I am really tired . . . and, perhaps, would be
best alone.”

She had been longing to be rid of him, for she
hoped that, like the fox he so resembled, Chauvelin would be prowling round,
thinking to find her alone.

But Lord Fancourt went, and still Chauvelin did not come. Oh! what had
happened? She felt Armand’s fate trembling in the balance . . . she
feared—now with a deadly fear—that Chauvelin had failed, and
that the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel had proved elusive once more; then she
knew that she need hope for no pity, no mercy, from him.

He had pronounced his “Either—or—” and nothing less
would content him: he was very spiteful, and would affect the belief that she
had wilfully misled him, and having failed to trap the eagle once again, his
revengeful mind would be content with the humble prey—Armand!

Yet she had done her best; had strained every nerve for Armand’s sake.
She could not bear to think that all had failed. She could not sit still; she
wanted to go and hear the worst at once; she wondered even that Chauvelin had
not come yet, to vent his wrath and satire upon her.

Lord Grenville himself came presently to tell her that her coach was ready, and
that Sir Percy was already waiting for her—ribbons in hand. Marguerite
said “Farewell” to her distinguished host; many of her friends
stopped her, as she crossed the rooms, to talk to her, and exchange pleasant
au revoirs.

The Minister only took final leave of beautiful Lady Blakeney on the top of the
stairs; below, on the landing, a veritable army of gallant gentlemen were
waiting to bid “Good-bye” to the queen of beauty and fashion,
whilst outside, under the massive portico, Sir Percy’s magnificent bays
were impatiently pawing the ground.

At the top of the stairs, just after she had taken final leave of her host, she
suddenly saw Chauvelin; he was coming up the stairs slowly, and rubbing his
thin hands very softly together.

There was a curious look on his mobile face, partly amused and wholly puzzled,
and as his keen eyes met Marguerite’s they became strangely sarcastic.

“M. Chauvelin,” she said, as he stopped on the top of the stairs,
bowing elaborately before her, “my coach is outside; may I claim your
arm?”

As gallant as ever, he offered her his arm and led her downstairs. The crowd
was very great, some of the Minister’s guests were departing, others were
leaning against the banisters watching the throng as it filed up and down the
wide staircase.

“Chauvelin,” she said at last desperately, “I must know what
has happened.”

“What has happened, dear lady?” he said, with affected surprise.
“Where? When?”

“You are torturing me, Chauvelin. I have helped you to-night . . . surely
I have the right to know. What happened in the dining-room at one o’clock
just now?”

She spoke in a whisper, trusting that in the general hubbub of the crowd her
words would remain unheeded by all, save the man at her side.

“Quiet and peace reigned supreme, fair lady; at that hour I was asleep in
the corner of one sofa and Sir Percy Blakeney in another.”

“Nobody came into the room at all?”

“Nobody.”

“Then we have failed, you and I? . . .”

“Yes! we have failed—perhaps . . .”

“But Armand?” she pleaded.

“Ah! Armand St. Just’s chances hang on a thread . . . pray heaven,
dear lady, that that thread may not snap.”

“Chauvelin, I worked for you, sincerely, earnestly . . . remember. . .
.”

“I remember my promise,” he said quietly; “the day that the
Scarlet Pimpernel and I meet on French soil, St. Just will be in the arms of
his charming sister.”

“Which means that a brave man’s blood will be on my hands,”
she said, with a shudder.

“His blood, or that of your brother. Surely at the present moment you
must hope, as I do, that the enigmatical Scarlet Pimpernel will start for
Calais to-day—”

“I am only conscious of one hope, citoyen.”

“And that is?”

“That Satan, your master, will have need of you elsewhere, before the sun
rises to-day.”

“You flatter me, citoyenne.”

She had detained him for a while, midway down the stairs, trying to get at the
thoughts which lay beyond that thin, fox-like mask. But Chauvelin remained
urbane, sarcastic, mysterious; not a line betrayed to the poor, anxious woman
whether she need fear or whether she dared to hope.

Downstairs on the landing she was soon surrounded. Lady Blakeney never stepped
from any house into her coach, without an escort of fluttering human moths
around the dazzling light of her beauty. But before she finally turned away
from Chauvelin, she held out a tiny hand to him, with that pretty gesture of
childish appeal which was so essentially her own.

“Give me some hope, my little Chauvelin,” she pleaded.

With perfect gallantry he bowed over that tiny hand, which looked so dainty and
white through the delicately transparent black lace mitten, and kissing the
tips of the rosy fingers:—

“Pray heaven that the thread may not snap,” he repeated, with his
enigmatic smile.

And stepping aside, he allowed the moths to flutter more closely round the
candle, and the brilliant throng of the jeunesse dorée, eagerly
attentive to Lady Blakeney’s every movement, hid the keen, fox-like face
from her view.

CHAPTER XVI.

RICHMOND

A few minutes later she was sitting, wrapped in costly furs, near Sir Percy
Blakeney on the box-seat of his magnificent coach, and the four splendid bays
had thundered down the quiet street.

The night was warm in spite of the gentle breeze which fanned
Marguerite’s burning cheeks. Soon London houses were left behind, and
rattling over old Hammersmith Bridge, Sir Percy was driving his bays rapidly
towards Richmond.

The river wound in and out in its pretty delicate curves, looking like a silver
serpent beneath the glittering rays of the moon. Long shadows from overhanging
trees spread occasional deep palls right across the road. The bays were rushing
along at breakneck speed, held but slightly back by Sir Percy’s strong,
unerring hands.

These nightly drives after balls and suppers in London were a source of
perpetual delight to Marguerite, and she appreciated her husband’s
eccentricity keenly, which caused him to adopt this mode of taking her home
every night, to their beautiful home by the river, instead of living in a
stuffy London house. He loved driving his spirited horses along the lonely,
moonlit roads, and she loved to sit on the box-seat, with the soft air of an
English late summer’s night fanning her face after the hot atmosphere of
a ball or supper-party. The drive was not a long one—less than an hour,
sometimes, when the bays were very fresh, and Sir Percy gave them full rein.

To-night he seemed to have a very devil in his fingers, and the coach seemed to
fly along the road, beside the river. As usual, he did not speak to her, but
stared straight in front of him, the ribbons seeming to lie quite loosely in
his slender, white hands. Marguerite looked at him tentatively once or twice;
she could see his handsome profile, and one lazy eye, with its straight fine
brow and drooping heavy lid.

The face in the moonlight looked singularly earnest, and recalled to
Marguerite’s aching heart those happy days of courtship, before he had
become the lazy nincompoop, the effete fop, whose life seemed spent in card and
supper rooms.

But now, in the moonlight, she could not catch the expression of the lazy blue
eyes; she could only see the outline of the firm chin, the corner of the strong
mouth, the well-cut massive shape of the forehead; truly, nature had meant well
by Sir Percy; his faults must all be laid at the door of that poor, half-crazy
mother, and of the distracted heart-broken father, neither of whom had cared
for the young life which was sprouting up between them, and which, perhaps,
their very carelessness was already beginning to wreck.

Marguerite suddenly felt intense sympathy for her husband. The moral crisis she
had just gone through made her feel indulgent towards the faults, the
delinquencies, of others.

How thoroughly a human being can be buffeted and overmastered by Fate, had been
borne in upon her with appalling force. Had anyone told her a week ago that she
would stoop to spy upon her friends, that she would betray a brave and
unsuspecting man into the hands of a relentless enemy, she would have laughed
the idea to scorn.

Yet she had done these things; anon, perhaps the death of that brave man would
be at her door, just as two years ago the Marquis de St. Cyr had perished
through a thoughtless word of hers; but in that case she was morally
innocent—she had meant no serious harm—fate merely had stepped in.
But this time she had done a thing that obviously was base, had done it
deliberately, for a motive which, perhaps, high moralists would not even
appreciate.

And as she felt her husband’s strong arm beside her, she also felt how
much more he would dislike and despise her, if he knew of this night’s
work. Thus human beings judge of one another, superficially, casually, throwing
contempt on one another, with but little reason, and no charity. She despised
her husband for his inanities and vulgar, unintellectual occupations; and he,
she felt, would despise her still worse, because she had not been strong enough
to do right for right’s sake, and to sacrifice her brother to the
dictates of her conscience.

Buried in her thoughts, Marguerite had found this hour in the breezy summer
night all too brief; and it was with a feeling of keen disappointment, that she
suddenly realised that the bays had turned into the massive gates of her
beautiful English home.

Sir Percy Blakeney’s house on the river has become a historic one:
palatial in its dimensions, it stands in the midst of exquisitely laid-out
gardens, with a picturesque terrace and frontage to the river. Built in Tudor
days, the old red brick of the walls looks eminently picturesque in the midst
of a bower of green, the beautiful lawn, with its old sun-dial, adding the true
note of harmony to its foreground. Great secular trees lent cool shadows to the
grounds, and now, on this warm early autumn night, the leaves slightly turned
to russets and gold, the old garden looked singularly poetic and peaceful in
the moonlight.

With unerring precision, Sir Percy had brought the four bays to a standstill
immediately in front of the fine Elizabethan entrance hall; in spite of the
lateness of the hour, an army of grooms seemed to have emerged from the very
ground, as the coach had thundered up, and were standing respectfully round.

Sir Percy jumped down quickly, then helped Marguerite to alight. She lingered
outside for a moment, whilst he gave a few orders to one of his men. She
skirted the house, and stepped on to the lawn, looking out dreamily into the
silvery landscape. Nature seemed exquisitely at peace, in comparison with the
tumultuous emotions she had gone through: she could faintly hear the ripple of
the river and the occasional soft and ghostlike fall of a dead leaf from a
tree.

All else was quiet round her. She had heard the horses prancing as they were
being led away to their distant stables, the hurrying of servants’ feet
as they had all gone within to rest: the house also was quite still. In two
separate suites of apartments, just above the magnificent reception-rooms,
lights were still burning; they were her rooms, and his, well divided from each
other by the whole width of the house, as far apart as their own lives had
become. Involuntarily she sighed—at that moment she could really not have
told why.

She was suffering from unconquerable heartache. Deeply and achingly she was
sorry for herself. Never had she felt so pitiably lonely, so bitterly in want
of comfort and of sympathy. With another sigh she turned away from the river
towards the house, vaguely wondering if, after such a night, she could ever
find rest and sleep.

Suddenly, before she reached the terrace, she heard a firm step upon the crisp
gravel, and the next moment her husband’s figure emerged out of the
shadow. He, too, had skirted the house, and was wandering along the lawn,
towards the river. He still wore his heavy driving coat with the numerous
lapels and collars he himself had set in fashion, but he had thrown it well
back, burying his hands as was his wont, in the deep pockets of his satin
breeches: the gorgeous white costume he had worn at Lord Grenville’s
ball, with its jabot of priceless lace, looked strangely ghostly against the
dark background of the house.

He apparently did not notice her, for, after a few moments’ pause, he
presently turned back towards the house, and walked straight up to the terrace.

“Sir Percy!”

He already had one foot on the lowest of the terrace steps, but at her voice he
started, and paused, then looked searchingly into the shadows whence she had
called to him.

She came forward quickly into the moonlight, and, as soon as he saw her, he
said, with that air of consummate gallantry he always wore when speaking to
her,—

“At your service, Madame!”

But his foot was still on the
step, and in his whole attitude there was a remote suggestion, distinctly
visible to her, that he wished to go, and had no desire for a midnight
interview.

“The air is deliciously cool,” she said, “the moonlight
peaceful and poetic, and the garden inviting. Will you not stay in it awhile;
the hour is not yet late, or is my company so distasteful to you, that you are
in a hurry to rid yourself of it?”

“Nay, Madame,” he rejoined placidly, “but ’tis on the
other foot the shoe happens to be, and I’ll warrant you’ll find the
midnight air more poetic without my company: no doubt the sooner I remove the
obstruction the better your ladyship will like it.”

He turned once more to go.

“I protest you mistake me, Sir Percy,” she said hurriedly, and
drawing a little closer to him; “the estrangement, which, alas! has
arisen between us, was none of my making, remember.”

“Begad! you must pardon me there, Madame!” he protested coldly,
“my memory was always of the shortest.”

He looked her straight in the eyes, with that lazy nonchalance which had become
second nature to him. She returned his gaze for a moment, then her eyes
softened, as she came up quite close to him, to the foot of the terrace steps.

“Of the shortest, Sir Percy? Faith! how it must have altered! Was it
three years ago or four that you saw me for one hour in Paris, on your way to
the East? When you came back two years later you had not forgotten me.”

She looked divinely pretty as she stood there in the moonlight, with the
fur-cloak sliding off her beautiful shoulders, the gold embroidery on her dress
shimmering around her, her childlike blue eyes turned up fully at him.

He stood for a moment, rigid and still, but for the clenching of his hand
against the stone balustrade of the terrace.

“You desired my presence, Madame,” he said frigidly. “I take
it that it was not with a view to indulging in tender reminiscences.”

His voice certainly was cold and uncompromising: his attitude before her, stiff
and unbending. Womanly decorum would have suggested that Marguerite should
return coldness for coldness, and should sweep past him without another word,
only with a curt nod of the head: but womanly instinct suggested that she
should remain—that keen instinct, which makes a beautiful woman conscious
of her powers long to bring to her knees the one man who pays her no homage.
She stretched out her hand to him.

“Nay, Sir Percy, why not? the present is not so glorious but that I
should not wish to dwell a little in the past.”

He bent his tall figure, and taking hold of the extreme tip of the fingers
which she still held out to him, he kissed them ceremoniously.

“I’ faith, Madame,” he said, “then you will pardon me,
if my dull wits cannot accompany you there.”

Once again he attempted to go, once more her voice, sweet, childlike, almost
tender, called him back.

“Sir Percy.”

“Your servant, Madame.”

“Is it possible that love can die?” she said with sudden,
unreasoning vehemence. “Methought that the passion which you once felt
for me would outlast the span of human life. Is there nothing left of that
love, Percy . . . which might help you . . . to bridge over that sad
estrangement?”

His massive figure seemed, while she spoke thus to him, to stiffen still more,
the strong mouth hardened, a look of relentless obstinacy crept into the
habitually lazy blue eyes.

“With what object, I pray you, Madame?” he asked coldly.

“I do not understand you.”

“Yet ’tis simple enough,” he said with sudden bitterness,
which seemed literally to surge through his words, though he was making visible
efforts to suppress it, “I humbly put the question to you, for my slow
wits are unable to grasp the cause of this, your ladyship’s sudden new
mood. Is it that you have the taste to renew the devilish sport which you
played so successfully last year? Do you wish to see me once more a love-sick
suppliant at your feet, so that you might again have the pleasure of kicking me
aside, like a troublesome lap-dog?”

She had succeeded in rousing him for the moment: and again she looked straight
at him, for it was thus she remembered him a year ago.

“Percy! I entreat you!” she whispered, “can we not bury the
past?”

“Pardon me, Madame, but I understood you to say that your desire was to
dwell in it.”

“Nay! I spoke not of that past, Percy!” she said, while a
tone of tenderness crept into her voice. “Rather did I speak of the time
when you loved me still! and I . . . oh! I was vain and frivolous; your wealth
and position allured me: I married you, hoping in my heart that your great love
for me would beget in me a love for you . . . but, alas! . . .”

The moon had sunk low down behind a bank of clouds. In the east a soft grey
light was beginning to chase away the heavy mantle of the night. He could only
see her graceful outline now, the small queenly head, with its wealth of
reddish golden curls, and the glittering gems forming the small, star-shaped,
red flower which she wore as a diadem in her hair.

“Twenty-four hours after our marriage, Madame, the Marquis de St. Cyr and
all his family perished on the guillotine, and the popular rumour reached me
that it was the wife of Sir Percy Blakeney who helped to send them
there.”

“Nay! I myself told you the truth of that odious tale.”

“Not till after it had been recounted to me by strangers, with all its
horrible details.”

“And you believed them then and there,” she said with great
vehemence, “without a proof or question—you believed that I, whom
you vowed you loved more than life, whom you professed you worshipped, that
I could do a thing so base as these strangers chose to recount.
You thought I meant to deceive you about it all—that I ought to have
spoken before I married you: yet, had you listened, I would have told you that
up to the very morning on which St. Cyr went to the guillotine, I was straining
every nerve, using every influence I possessed, to save him and his family. But
my pride sealed my lips, when your love seemed to perish, as if under the knife
of that same guillotine. Yet I would have told you how I was duped! Aye! I,
whom that same popular rumour had endowed with the sharpest wits in France! I
was tricked into doing this thing, by men who knew how to play upon my love for
an only brother, and my desire for revenge. Was it unnatural?”

Her voice became choked with tears. She paused for a moment or two, trying to
regain some sort of composure. She looked appealingly at him, almost as if he
were her judge. He had allowed her to speak on in her own vehement, impassioned
way, offering no comment, no word of sympathy: and now, while she paused,
trying to swallow down the hot tears that gushed to her eyes, he waited,
impassive and still. The dim, grey light of early dawn seemed to make his tall
form look taller and more rigid. The lazy, good-natured face looked strangely
altered. Marguerite, excited, as she was, could see that the eyes were no
longer languid, the mouth no longer good-humoured and inane. A curious look of
intense passion seemed to glow from beneath his drooping lids, the mouth was
tightly closed, the lips compressed, as if the will alone held that surging
passion in check.

Marguerite Blakeney was, above all, a woman, with all a woman’s
fascinating foibles, all a woman’s most lovable sins. She knew in a
moment that for the past few months she had been mistaken: that this man who
stood here before her, cold as a statue, when her musical voice struck upon his
ear, loved her, as he had loved her a year ago: that his passion might have
been dormant, but that it was there, as strong, as intense, as overwhelming, as
when first her lips met his in one long, maddening kiss.

Pride had kept him from her, and, woman-like, she meant to win back
that conquest which had been hers before. Suddenly it seemed to her that the
only happiness life could ever hold for her again would be in feeling that
man’s kiss once more upon her lips.

“Listen to the tale, Sir Percy,” she said, and her voice now was
low, sweet, infinitely tender. “Armand was all in all to me! We had no
parents, and brought one another up. He was my little father, and I, his tiny
mother; we loved one another so. Then one day—do you mind me, Sir Percy?
the Marquis de St. Cyr had my brother Armand thrashed—thrashed by his
lacqueys—that brother whom I loved better than all the world! And his
offence? That he, a plebeian, had dared to love the daughter of the aristocrat;
for that he was waylaid and thrashed . . . thrashed like a dog within an inch
of his life! Oh, how I suffered! his humiliation had eaten into my very soul!
When the opportunity occurred, and I was able to take my revenge, I took it.
But I only thought to bring that proud marquis to trouble and humiliation. He
plotted with Austria against his own country. Chance gave me knowledge of this;
I spoke of it, but I did not know—how could I guess?—they trapped
and duped me. When I realised what I had done, it was too late.”

“It is perhaps a little difficult, Madame,” said Sir Percy, after a
moment of silence between them, “to go back over the past. I have
confessed to you that my memory is short, but the thought certainly lingered in
my mind that, at the time of the Marquis’ death, I entreated you for an
explanation of those same noisome popular rumours. If that same memory does
not, even now, play me a trick, I fancy that you refused me all
explanation then, and demanded of my love a humiliating allegiance it was not
prepared to give.”

“I wished to test your love for me, and it did not bear the test. You
used to tell me that you drew the very breath of life but for me, and for love
of me.”

“And to probe that love, you demanded that I should forfeit mine
honour,” he said, whilst gradually his impassiveness seemed to leave him,
his rigidity to relax; “that I should accept without murmur or question,
as a dumb and submissive slave, every action of my mistress. My heart
overflowing with love and passion, I asked for no explanation—I
waited for one, not doubting—only hoping. Had you spoken but one
word, from you I would have accepted any explanation and believed it. But you
left me without a word, beyond a bald confession of the actual horrible facts;
proudly you returned to your brother’s house, and left me alone . . . for
weeks . . . not knowing, now, in whom to believe, since the shrine, which
contained my one illusion, lay shattered to earth at my feet.”

She need not complain now that he was cold and impassive; his very voice shook
with an intensity of passion, which he was making superhuman efforts to keep in
check.

“Aye! the madness of my pride!” she said sadly. “Hardly had I
gone, already I had repented. But when I returned, I found you, oh, so altered!
wearing already that mask of somnolent indifference which you have never laid
aside until . . . until now.”

She was so close to him that her soft, loose hair was wafted against his cheek;
her eyes, glowing with tears, maddened him, the music in her voice sent fire
through his veins. But he would not yield to the magic charm of this woman whom
he had so deeply loved, and at whose hands his pride had suffered so bitterly.
He closed his eyes to shut out the dainty vision of that sweet face, of that
snow-white neck and graceful figure, round which the faint rosy light of dawn
was just beginning to hover playfully.

“Nay, Madame, it is no mask,” he said icily; “I swore to you
. . . once, that my life was yours. For months now it has been your plaything .
. . it has served its purpose.”

But now she knew that that very coldness was a mask. The trouble, the sorrow
she had gone through last night, suddenly came back to her mind, but no longer
with bitterness, rather with a feeling that this man who loved her, would help
her to bear the burden.

“Sir Percy,” she said impulsively, “Heaven knows you have
been at pains to make the task, which I had set to myself, terribly difficult
to accomplish. You spoke of my mood just now; well! we will call it that, if
you will. I wished to speak to you . . . because . . . because I was in trouble
. . . and had need . . . of your sympathy.”

“It is yours to command, Madame.”

“How cold you are!” she sighed. “Faith! I can scarce believe
that but a few months ago one tear in my eye had set you well-nigh crazy. Now I
come to you . . . with a half-broken heart . . . and . . . and . . .”

“I pray you, Madame,” he said, whilst his voice shook almost as
much as hers, “in what way can I serve you?”

“Percy!—Armand is in deadly danger. A letter of his . . . rash,
impetuous, as were all his actions, and written to Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, has
fallen into the hands of a fanatic. Armand is hopelessly compromised . . .
to-morrow, perhaps he will be arrested . . . after that the guillotine . . .
unless . . . unless . . . oh! it is horrible!” . . . she said, with a
sudden wail of anguish, as all the events of the past night came rushing back
to her mind, “horrible! . . . and you do not understand . . . you cannot
. . . and I have no one to whom I can turn . . . for help . . . or even for
sympathy. . . .”

Tears now refused to be held back. All her trouble, her struggles, the awful
uncertainty of Armand’s fate overwhelmed her. She tottered, ready to
fall, and leaning against the stone balustrade, she buried her face in her
hands and sobbed bitterly.

At first mention of Armand St. Just’s name and of the peril in which he
stood, Sir Percy’s face had become a shade more pale; and the look of
determination and obstinacy appeared more marked than ever between his eyes.
However, he said nothing for the moment, but watched her, as her delicate frame
was shaken with sobs, watched her until unconsciously his face softened, and
what looked almost like tears seemed to glisten in his eyes.

“And so,” he said with bitter sarcasm, “the murderous dog of
the revolution is turning upon the very hands that fed it? . . . Begad,
Madame,” he added very gently, as Marguerite continued to sob
hysterically, “will you dry your tears? . . . I never could bear to see a
pretty woman cry, and I . . .”

Instinctively, with sudden, overmastering passion, at sight of her helplessness
and of her grief, he stretched out his arms, and the next, would have seized
her and held her to him, protected from every evil with his very life, his very
heart’s blood. . . . But pride had the better of it in this struggle once
again; he restrained himself with a tremendous effort of will, and said coldly,
though still very gently,—

“Will you not turn to me, Madame, and tell me in what way I may have the
honour to serve you?”

She made a violent effort to control herself, and turning her tear-stained face
to him, she once more held out her hand, which he kissed with the same
punctilious gallantry; but Marguerite’s fingers, this time, lingered in
his hand for a second or two longer than was absolutely necessary, and this was
because she had felt that his hand trembled perceptibly and was burning hot,
whilst his lips felt as cold as marble.

“Can you do aught for Armand?” she said sweetly and simply.
“You have so much influence at court . . . so many friends . . .”

“Nay, Madame, should you not rather seek the influence of your French
friend, M. Chauvelin? His extends, if I mistake not, even as far as the
Republican Government of France.”

“I cannot ask him, Percy. . . . Oh! I wish I dared to tell you . . . but
. . . but . . . he has put a price on my brother’s head, which . .
.”

She would have given worlds if she had felt the courage then to tell him
everything . . . all she had done that night—how she had suffered and how
her hand had been forced. But she dared not give way to that impulse . . . not
now, when she was just beginning to feel that he still loved her, when she
hoped that she could win him back. She dared not make another confession to
him. After all, he might not understand; he might not sympathise with her
struggles and temptation. His love still dormant might sleep the sleep of
death.

Perhaps he divined what was passing in her mind. His whole attitude was one of
intense longing—a veritable prayer for that confidence, which her foolish
pride withheld from him. When she remained silent he sighed, and said with
marked coldness—

“Faith, Madame, since it distresses you, we will not speak of it. . . .
As for Armand, I pray you have no fear. I pledge you my word that he shall be
safe. Now, have I your permission to go? The hour is getting late, and . .
.”

“You will at least accept my gratitude?” she said, as she drew
quite close to him, and speaking with real tenderness.

With a quick, almost involuntary effort he would have taken her then in his
arms, for her eyes were swimming in tears, which he longed to kiss away; but
she had lured him once, just like this, then cast him aside like an ill-fitting
glove. He thought this was but a mood, a caprice, and he was too proud to lend
himself to it once again.

“It is too soon, Madame!” he said quietly; “I have done
nothing as yet. The hour is late, and you must be fatigued. Your women will be
waiting for you upstairs.”

He stood aside to allow her to pass. She sighed, a quick sigh of
disappointment. His pride and her beauty had been in direct conflict, and his
pride had remained the conqueror. Perhaps, after all, she had been deceived
just now; what she took to be the light of love in his eyes might only have
been the passion of pride or, who knows, of hatred instead of love. She stood
looking at him for a moment or two longer. He was again as rigid, as impassive,
as before. Pride had conquered, and he cared naught for her. The grey of dawn
was gradually yielding to the rosy light of the rising sun. Birds began to
twitter; Nature awakened, smiling in happy response to the warmth of this
glorious October morning. Only between these two hearts there lay a strong,
impassable barrier, built up of pride on both sides, which neither of them
cared to be the first to demolish.

He had bent his tall figure in a low ceremonious bow, as she finally, with
another bitter little sigh, began to mount the terrace steps.

The long train of her gold-embroidered gown swept the dead leaves off the
steps, making a faint harmonious sh—sh—sh as she glided up, with
one hand resting on the balustrade, the rosy light of dawn making an aureole of
gold round her hair, and causing the rubies on her head and arms to sparkle.
She reached the tall glass doors which led into the house. Before entering, she
paused once again to look at him, hoping against hope to see his arms stretched
out to her, and to hear his voice calling her back. But he had not moved; his
massive figure looked the very personification of unbending pride, of fierce
obstinacy.

Hot tears again surged to her eyes, and as she would not let him see them, she
turned quickly within, and ran as fast as she could up to her own rooms.

Had she but turned back then, and looked out once more on to the rose-lit
garden, she would have seen that which would have made her own sufferings seem
but light and easy to bear—a strong man, overwhelmed with his own passion
and his own despair. Pride had given way at last, obstinacy was gone: the will
was powerless. He was but a man madly, blindly, passionately in love, and as
soon as her light footsteps had died away within the house, he knelt down upon
the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love he kissed one by one the
places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade there, where
her tiny hand had rested last.

CHAPTER XVII.

FAREWELL

When Marguerite reached her room, she found her maid terribly anxious about
her.

“Your ladyship will be so tired,” said the poor woman, whose own
eyes were half closed with sleep. “It is past five o’clock.”

“Ah, yes, Louise, I daresay I shall be tired presently,” said
Marguerite, kindly; “but you are very tired now, so go to bed at once.
I’ll get into bed alone.”

“But, my lady . . .”

“Now, don’t argue, Louise, but go to bed. Give me a wrap, and leave
me alone.”

Louise was only too glad to obey. She took off her mistress’s gorgeous
ball-dress, and wrapped her up in a soft billowy gown.

“Does your ladyship wish for anything else?” she asked, when that
was done.

“No, nothing more. Put out the lights as you go out.”

“Yes, my lady. Good-night, my lady.”

“Good-night, Louise.”

When the maid was gone, Marguerite drew aside the curtains and threw open the
windows. The garden and the river beyond were flooded with rosy light. Far away
to the east, the rays of the rising sun had changed the rose into vivid gold.
The lawn was deserted now, and Marguerite looked down upon the terrace where
she had stood a few moments ago trying vainly to win back a man’s love,
which once had been so wholly hers.

It was strange that through all her troubles, all her anxiety for Armand, she
was mostly conscious at the present moment of a keen and bitter heartache.

Her very limbs seemed to ache with longing for the love of a man who had
spurned her, who had resisted her tenderness, remained cold to her appeals, and
had not responded to the glow of passion, which had caused her to feel and hope
that those happy olden days in Paris were not all dead and forgotten.

How strange it all was! She loved him still. And now that she looked back upon
the last few months of misunderstandings and of loneliness, she realised that
she had never ceased to love him; that deep down in her heart she had always
vaguely felt that his foolish inanities, his empty laugh, his lazy nonchalance
were nothing but a mask; that the real man, strong, passionate, wilful, was
there still—the man she had loved, whose intensity had fascinated her,
whose personality attracted her, since she always felt that behind his
apparently slow wits there was a certain something, which he kept hidden from
all the world, and most especially from her.

A woman’s heart is such a complex problem—the owner thereof is
often most incompetent to find the solution of this puzzle.

Did Marguerite Blakeney, “the cleverest woman in Europe,” really
love a fool? Was it love that she had felt for him a year ago when she married
him? Was it love she felt for him now that she realised that he still loved
her, but that he would not become her slave, her passionate, ardent lover once
again? Nay! Marguerite herself could not have told that. Not at this moment at
any rate; perhaps her pride had sealed her mind against a better understanding
of her own heart. But this she did know—that she meant to capture that
obstinate heart back again. That she would conquer once more . . . and then,
that she would never lose him . . . . She would keep him, keep his love,
deserve it, and cherish it; for this much was certain, that there was no longer
any happiness possible for her without that one man’s love.

Thus the most contradictory thoughts and emotions rushed madly through her
mind. Absorbed in them, she had allowed time to slip by; perhaps, tired out
with long excitement, she had actually closed her eyes and sunk into a troubled
sleep, wherein quickly fleeting dreams seemed but the continuation of her
anxious thoughts—when suddenly she was roused, from dream or meditation,
by the noise of footsteps outside her door.

Nervously she jumped up and listened; the house itself was as still as ever;
the footsteps had retreated. Through her wide-open windows the brilliant rays
of the morning sun were flooding her room with light. She looked up at the
clock; it was half-past six—too early for any of the household to be
already astir.

She certainly must have dropped asleep, quite unconsciously. The noise of the
footsteps, also of hushed, subdued voices had awakened her—what could
they be?

Gently, on tip-toe, she crossed the room and opened the door to listen; not a
sound—that peculiar stillness of the early morning when sleep with all
mankind is at its heaviest. But the noise had made her nervous, and when,
suddenly, at her feet, on the very doorstep, she saw something white lying
there—a letter evidently—she hardly dared touch it. It seemed so
ghostlike. It certainly was not there when she came upstairs; had Louise
dropped it? or was some tantalising spook at play, showing her fairy letters
where none existed?

At last she stooped to pick it up, and, amazed, puzzled beyond measure, she saw
that the letter was addressed to herself in her husband’s large,
businesslike-looking hand. What could he have to say to her, in the middle of
the night, which could not be put off until the morning?

She tore open the envelope and read:—

“A most unforeseen circumstance forces me to leave for the North
immediately, so I beg your ladyship’s pardon if I do not avail myself of
the honour of bidding you good-bye. My business may keep me employed for about
a week, so I shall not have the privilege of being present at your
ladyship’s water-party on Wednesday. I remain your ladyship’s most
humble and most obedient servant,

PERCY BLAKENEY.”

Marguerite must suddenly have been imbued with her husband’s slowness of
intellect, for she had perforce to read the few simple lines over and over
again, before she could fully grasp their meaning.

She stood on the landing, turning over and over in her hand this curt and
mysterious epistle, her mind a blank, her nerves strained with agitation and a
presentiment she could not very well have explained.

Sir Percy owned considerable property in the North, certainly, and he had often
before gone there alone and stayed away a week at a time; but it seemed so very
strange that circumstances should have arisen between five and six
o’clock in the morning that compelled him to start in this extreme hurry.

Vainly she tried to shake off an unaccustomed feeling of nervousness: she was
trembling from head to foot. A wild, unconquerable desire seized her to see her
husband again, at once, if only he had not already started.

Forgetting the fact that she was only very lightly clad in a morning wrap, and
that her hair lay loosely about her shoulders, she flew down the stairs, right
through the hall towards the front door.

It was as usual barred and bolted, for the indoor servants were not yet up; but
her keen ears had detected the sound of voices and the pawing of a
horse’s hoof against the flag-stones.

With nervous, trembling fingers Marguerite undid the bolts one by one, bruising
her hands, hurting her nails, for the locks were heavy and stiff. But she did
not care; her whole frame shook with anxiety at the very thought that she might
be too late; that he might have gone without her seeing him and bidding him
“God-speed!”

At last, she had turned the key and thrown open the door. Her ears had not
deceived her. A groom was standing close by holding a couple of horses; one of
these was Sultan, Sir Percy’s favourite and swiftest horse, saddled ready
for a journey.

The next moment Sir Percy himself appeared round the further corner of the
house and came quickly towards the horses. He had changed his gorgeous ball
costume, but was as usual irreproachably and richly apparelled in a suit of
fine cloth, with lace jabot and ruffles, high top-boots, and riding breeches.

Marguerite went forward a few steps. He looked up and saw her. A slight frown
appeared between his eyes.

“You are going?” she said quickly and feverishly.
“Whither?”

“As I have had the honour of informing your ladyship, urgent, most
unexpected business calls me to the North this morning,” he said, in his
usual cold, drawly manner.

“But . . . your guests to-morrow . . .”

“I have prayed your ladyship to offer my humble excuses to His Royal
Highness. You are such a perfect hostess, I do not think that I shall be
missed.”

“But surely you might have waited for your journey . . . until after our
water-party . . .” she said, still speaking quickly and nervously.
“Surely the business is not so urgent . . . and you said nothing about
it—just now.”

“My business, as I had the honour to tell you, Madame, is as unexpected
as it is urgent. . . . May I therefore crave your permission to go. . . . Can I
do aught for you in town? . . . on my way back?”

“No . . . no . . . thanks . . . nothing. . . . But you will be back
soon?”

“Very soon.”

“Before the end of the week?”

“I cannot say.”

He was evidently trying to get away, whilst she was straining every nerve to
keep him back for a moment or two.

“Percy,” she said, “will you not tell me why you go to-day?
Surely I, as your wife, have the right to know. You have not been called
away to the North. I know it. There were no letters, no couriers from there
before we left for the opera last night, and nothing was waiting for you when
we returned from the ball. . . . You are not going to the North, I feel
convinced. . . . There is some mystery . . . and . . .”

“Nay, there is no mystery, Madame,” he replied, with a slight tone
of impatience. “My business has to do with Armand . . . there! Now, have
I your leave to depart?”

“With Armand? . . . But you will run no danger?”

“Danger? I? . . . Nay, Madame, your solicitude does me honour. As you
say, I have some influence; my intention is to exert it before it be too
late.”

“Will you allow me to thank you at least?”

“Nay, Madame,” he said coldly, “there is no need for that. My
life is at your service, and I am already more than repaid.”

“And mine will be at yours, Sir Percy, if you will but accept it, in
exchange for what you do for Armand,” she said, as, impulsively, she
stretched out both her hands to him. “There! I will not detain you . . .
my thoughts go with you . . . Farewell! . . .”

How lovely she looked in this morning sunlight, with her ardent hair streaming
around her shoulders. He bowed very low and kissed her hand; she felt the
burning kiss and her heart thrilled with joy and hope.

“You will come back?” she said tenderly.

“Very soon!” he replied, looking longingly into her blue eyes.

“And . . . you will remember? . . .” she asked as her eyes, in
response to his look, gave him an infinity of promise.

“I will always remember, Madame, that you have honoured me by commanding
my services.”

The words were cold and formal, but they did not chill her this time. Her
woman’s heart had read his, beneath the impassive mask his pride still
forced him to wear.

He bowed to her again, then begged her leave to depart. She stood on one side
whilst he jumped on to Sultan’s back, then, as he galloped out of the
gates, she waved him a final “Adieu.”

A bend in the road soon hid him from view; his confidential groom had some
difficulty in keeping pace with him, for Sultan flew along in response to his
master’s excited mood. Marguerite, with a sigh that was almost a happy
one, turned and went within. She went back to her room, for suddenly, like a
tired child, she felt quite sleepy.

Her heart seemed all at once to be in complete peace, and, though it still
ached with undefined longing, a vague and delicious hope soothed it as with a
balm.

She felt no longer anxious about Armand. The man who had just ridden away, bent
on helping her brother, inspired her with complete confidence in his strength
and in his power. She marvelled at herself for having ever looked upon him as
an inane fool; of course, that was a mask worn to hide the bitter wound
she had dealt to his faith and to his love. His passion would have overmastered
him, and he would not let her see how much he still cared and how deeply he
suffered.

But now all would be well: she would crush her own pride, humble it before him,
tell him everything, trust him in everything; and those happy days would come
back, when they used to wander off together in the forests of Fontainebleau,
when they spoke little—for he was always a silent man—but when she
felt that against that strong heart she would always find rest and happiness.

The more she thought of the events of the past night, the less fear had she of
Chauvelin and his schemes. He had failed to discover the identity of the
Scarlet Pimpernel, of that she felt sure. Both Lord Fancourt and Chauvelin
himself had assured her that no one had been in the dining-room at one
o’clock except the Frenchman himself and Percy—Yes!—Percy!
she might have asked him, had she thought of it! Anyway, she had no fears that
the unknown and brave hero would fall in Chauvelin’s trap; his death at
any rate would not be at her door.

Armand certainly was still in danger, but Percy had pledged his word that
Armand would be safe, and somehow, as Marguerite had seen him riding away, the
possibility that he could fail in whatever he undertook never even remotely
crossed her mind. When Armand was safely over in England she would not allow
him to go back to France.

She felt almost happy now, and, drawing the curtains closely together again to
shut out the piercing sun, she went to bed at last, laid her head upon the
pillow, and, like a wearied child, soon fell into a peaceful and dreamless
sleep.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE MYSTERIOUS DEVICE

The day was well advanced when Marguerite woke, refreshed by her long sleep.
Louise had brought her some fresh milk and a dish of fruit, and she partook of
this frugal breakfast with hearty appetite.

Thoughts crowded thick and fast in her mind as she munched her grapes; most of
them went galloping away after the tall, erect figure of her husband, whom she
had watched riding out of sight more than five hours ago.

In answer to her eager inquiries, Louise brought back the news that the groom
had come home with Sultan, having left Sir Percy in London. The groom thought
that his master was about to get on board his schooner, which was lying off
just below London Bridge. Sir Percy had ridden thus far, had then met Briggs,
the skipper of the Day Dream, and had sent the groom back to Richmond
with Sultan and the empty saddle.

This news puzzled Marguerite more than ever. Where could Sir Percy be going
just now in the Day Dream? On Armand’s behalf, he had said. Well!
Sir Percy had influential friends everywhere. Perhaps he was going to
Greenwich, or . . . but Marguerite ceased to conjecture; all would be explained
anon: he said that he would come back, and that he would remember.

A
long, idle day lay before Marguerite. She was expecting the visit of her old
school-fellow, little Suzanne de Tournay. With all the merry mischief at her
command, she had tendered her request for Suzanne’s company to the
Comtesse in the presence of the Prince of Wales last night. His Royal Highness
had loudly applauded the notion, and declared that he would give himself the
pleasure of calling on the two ladies in the course of the afternoon. The
Comtesse had not dared to refuse, and then and there was entrapped into a
promise to send little Suzanne to spend a long and happy day at Richmond with
her friend.

Marguerite expected her eagerly; she longed for a chat about old schooldays
with the child; she felt that she would prefer Suzanne’s company to that
of anyone else, and together they would roam through the fine old garden and
rich deer park, or stroll along the river.

But Suzanne had not come yet, and Marguerite being dressed, prepared to go
downstairs. She looked quite a girl this morning in her simple muslin frock,
with a broad blue sash round her slim waist, and the dainty cross-over fichu
into which, at her bosom, she had fastened a few late crimson roses.

She crossed the landing outside her own suite of apartments, and stood still
for a moment at the head of the fine oak staircase, which led to the lower
floor. On her left were her husband’s apartments, a suite of rooms which
she practically never entered.

They consisted of bedroom, dressing and reception-room, and, at the extreme end
of the landing, of a small study, which, when Sir Percy did not use it, was
always kept locked. His own special and confidential valet, Frank, had charge
of this room. No one was ever allowed to go inside. My lady had never cared to
do so, and the other servants had, of course, not dared to break this
hard-and-fast rule.

Marguerite had often, with that good-natured contempt which she had recently
adopted towards her husband, chaffed him about this secrecy which surrounded
his private study. Laughingly she had always declared that he strictly excluded
all prying eyes from his sanctum for fear they should detect how very little
“study” went on within its four walls: a comfortable arm-chair for
Sir Percy’s sweet slumbers was, no doubt, its most conspicuous piece of
furniture.

Marguerite thought of all this on this bright October morning as she glanced
along the corridor. Frank was evidently busy with his master’s rooms, for
most of the doors stood open, that of the study amongst the others.

A sudden, burning, childish curiosity seized her to have a peep at Sir
Percy’s sanctum. The restriction, of course, did not apply to her, and
Frank would, of course, not dare to oppose her. Still, she hoped that the valet
would be busy in one of the other rooms, that she might have that one quick
peep in secret, and unmolested.