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                                 THE
                               SCARLET
                              PIMPERNEL

                                  BY
                               BARONESS
                                ORCZY


                               Contents



     I.  PARIS: SEPTEMBER, 1792
    II.  DOVER: "THE FISHERMAN'S REST"
   III.  THE REFUGEES
    IV.  THE LEAGUE OF THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL
     V.  MARGUERITE
    VI.  AN EXQUISITE OF '92
   VII.  THE SECRET ORCHARD
  VIII.  THE ACCREDITED AGENT
    IX.  THE OUTRAGE
     X.  IN THE OPERA BOX
    XI.  LORD GRENVILLE'S BALL
   XII.  THE SCRAP OF PAPER
  XIII.  EITHER XIV.  ONE O'CLOCK PRECISELY!
    XV.  DOUBT
   XVI.  RICHMOND
  XVII.  FAREWELL
 XVIII.  THE MYSTERIOUS DEVICE
   XIX.  THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL
    XX.  THE FRIEND
   XXI.  SUSPENSE
  XXII.  CALAIS
 XXIII.  HOPE
  XXIV.  THE DEATH XXV.  THE EAGLE AND THE FOX
  XXVI.  THE JEW
 XXVII.  ON THE TRACK
XXVIII.  THE PERE BLANCHARD'S HUT
  XXIX.  TRAPPED
   XXX.  THE SCHOONER
  XXXI.  THE ESCAPE




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 Greve 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 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 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 feelings 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 metres 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 car 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 everyone 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 Greve, 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 hats, "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.

"He! la mere!" 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 mere?" asked Bibot, who, hardened soldier that
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 Tourney 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.

"SACRE TONNERRE," said the captain, "but it is feared that
it was that accursed Englishman himself--the Scarlet Pimpernel."




CHAPTER II              DOVER: "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 that 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 the
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 Reef" 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 before him, aye, and his
grandfather and greatgrandfather 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, and 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 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
neighborhood, 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 worth 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-dying' like the `Guptian
mother's first born, and doin' no more good than they did, pore dears,
save a lot more 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 lets `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 one of
those Scriptural utterances which 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 do 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," febbly 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,
Godforsaking 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 sided 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.

"Hi, hip, hurrah!" retorted the whole company present.  Then
there was a 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 the 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 every one 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; 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.

By 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, 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
gentlemen--tall, well set-up, broad of shoulders and merry of face,
his laughter rang loudly whereever 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 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 setting 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 a 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 quick 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
traveling 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 snowy-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 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 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 a 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 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 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 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
!  Mammanoeuvre, 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 affection 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 reasurred 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 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 the 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-breath 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 wellborn, 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, "A la lanterne les aristos!" at the 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 fellowmen 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 had done that so far, Madame."

"It is wonderful to me, wonderful!--That you should all be so
brave, so devoted to your fellowmen--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, while 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 Comedie Francaise, 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 SOUPCON 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, while 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 auerole 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 every one 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 effusive 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 was 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 these 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, scarcely 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 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 affection, 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
trifled 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 Comedie Francaise, 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 DEBUT 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 Comedie Francaise, 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 SOIREE DE CONTRAT or DINER DE FIANCAILLES 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--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 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 died an imbecile.

Thus society accepted him, petted him, made much of him, since
his horses were the finest in the country, his FETES 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 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 irreproachable 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 Mechline 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, recognizing 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
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 surpressed 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 a 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 SOUPCON 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 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 enchoing 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 the 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 the 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 the
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, along 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 demean
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 about 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 any one 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 all 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 sacrified 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: 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 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.
The 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 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 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 tie 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,
loved Angele 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
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 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 kin 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 in this awful fate.

Marguerite, horrified at the terrible consequences of her own
thoughtlessness, was powerless to save the Marquis: his 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 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; endeavouring 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?"

"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 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 asked archly, "or I
should not have been so pleased to see you."

"And this within 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 as 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 a
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
'a la Scarlet Pimpernel'; our horses are called `Scarlet Pimpernel';
at the Prince of Wales' supper party the other night we had a `souffle
a 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 `a 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 know, 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 EMIGRES 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 EMIGRES, 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, organized 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 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 judiciaries, 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 fellowmen, 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 that 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 villiany."

"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 Suzannne, 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."

"Al 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.

"Al 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, `A
bas les aristos!'  But the market cart got through along with some
others, and the Scarlet Pimpernel, in shawl, petticoat and hood,
yelled `A 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 chateau,
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 the 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 does
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 atrracted 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 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 in
the pit, as well as in the more plebeian balconies and galleries
above.  Gluck'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
EMIGRES 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, scanning every face,
scrutinised every box.  Evidently the one face she wished to see was
not there, for she settled herself 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 _A_
PROPOS.  Here is Madame la Comtesse de Tournay positively dying to
hear the latest news from France."

The distinguished diplomat 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 diplomat
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 such 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 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 comely 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 through this
ENTR'ACTE, with his eternal snuff-box in his hand, and with his keen
pale eyes intently fixed upon a box opposite 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 crossover 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 hey day of youth, the darling of a brilliant
throng, adored, FETED, 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 Gluck'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 DOREE of London, and had just dismissed
them all, wishing to be alone with Gluck 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
Gluck, 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 he vouchsafed him no
reply, "Lady Blakeney is always so surrounded, so FETED 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 will 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 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 faro" 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 up 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 organized by
that arch-meddler, the Scarlet Pimpernel.  Some of the threads, too,
of this mysterious organization have come 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 pases 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 the 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 in 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 service 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 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 sour-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 toward 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 new-comer 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 EMIGRES, 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 EMIGRES, who were FETED 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 majordomo'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 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 there is no need for his kind of meditation. . . .
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 hand: he could afford to remain silent and to wait
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 FETED
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
little 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 on 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 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 TETE-A-TETE 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, closing 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 two 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 realize 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 delightedly 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 take 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 CONGE, 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 aver 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 upon 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 have 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-A-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 tomorrow. . . ."  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, 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 Comedie Francaise; 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 English woman, 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 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 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 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 of 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 TETE-A-TETE.  His eyes had met hers for a moment
after the `fore-supper minuet, and she knew that the keen diplomat,
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 eyes on it for that of ten seconds."

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

She nodded.  Then 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 the 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 man in a
long and animated conversation--we discussed Herr Gluck'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 on 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 neighborhood of Calais, of an inn which I know well, called `Le
Chat Gris,' of a lonely place somewhere on the coast--the Pere
Blanchard's hut--which I must endeavor 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 these 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 energies 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--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 scandal; there were
chairs straight up in a row that still looked starchy, critical, acid,
like antiquated dowager; there were a few isolated, single chairs,
close to the table, that spoke of gourmands intent on the most
RECHERCHE 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 the
whole revolution had sworn to bring to his death?  Everything about
him was weird and mysterious; his personality, which he 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 proceedings 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 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.

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 impatient pawing the ground.

At the top of the stairs, just after she had taken final leave
of her host, she suddenly say 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, 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 one 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, mid-way 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 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
DOREE, 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 cozy 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 words 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.

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, 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
foregrounds, 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 late 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 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 servant's 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
non-chalance 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 the 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
Marguerite should return coldness for coldness, and should sweep past
him without another word, only with a curt nod of her 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 a
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 every 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 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 the very coldness was a mask.  The
trouble, the sorrow she had gone through last night, suddenly came
back into her mind, but no longer with bitterness, rather with a
feeling that this man who loved her, would help her 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, 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. . .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 tone 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 the 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 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 light 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, 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.