Book + 

I + 

Bath, 1793 + 

I + 

The Moor + 

I + 

Silence. Loneliness. Desolation. + 

And the darkness of late afternoon in November, when the fog from the Bristol Channel has laid its pall upon moor and valley and hill: the last grey glimmer of a wintry sunset has faded in the west: earth and sky are wrapped in the gloomy veils of oncoming night. Some little way ahead a tiny light flickers feebly. + 

“Surely we cannot be far now.” + 

“A little more patience, Mounzeer. Twenty minutes and we be there.” + 

“Twenty minutes, mordieu. And I have ridden since the morning. And you tell me it was not far.” + 

“Not far, Mounzeer. But we be not ’orzemen either of us. We doan’t travel very fast.” + 

“How can I ride fast on this heavy beast? And in this satané mud. My horse is up to his knees in it. And I am wet⁠—ah! wet to my skin in this sacré fog of yours.” + 

The other made no reply. Indeed he seemed little inclined for conversation: his whole attention appeared to be riveted on the business of keeping in his saddle, and holding his horse’s head turned in the direction in which he wished it to go: he was riding a yard or two ahead of his companion, and it did not need any assurance on his part that he was no horseman: he sat very loosely in his saddle, his broad shoulders bent, his head thrust forward, his knees turned out, his hands clinging alternately to the reins and to the pommel with that ludicrous inconsequent gesture peculiar to those who are wholly unaccustomed to horse exercise. + 

His attitude, in fact, as well as the promiscuous set of clothes which he wore⁠—a labourer’s smock, a battered high hat, threadbare corduroys and fisherman’s boots⁠—at once suggested the loafer, the do-nothing who hangs round the yards of halfway houses and posting inns on the chance of earning a few coppers by an easy job which does not entail too much exertion on his part and which will not take him too far from his favourite haunts. When he spoke⁠—which was not often⁠—the soft burr in the pronunciation of the sibilants betrayed the Westcountryman. + 

His companion, on the other hand, was obviously a stranger: high of stature, and broadly built, his wide shoulders and large hands and feet, his square head set upon a short thick neck, all bespoke the physique of a labouring man, whilst his town-made clothes⁠—his heavy caped coat, admirably tailored, his buckskin breeches and boots of fine leather⁠—suggested, if not absolutely the gentleman, at any rate one belonging to the well-to-do classes. Though obviously not quite so inexperienced in the saddle as the other man appeared to be, he did not look very much at home in the saddle either: he held himself very rigid and upright and squared his shoulders with a visible effort at seeming at ease, like a townsman out for a constitutional on the fashionable promenade of his own city, or a cavalry subaltern but lately emerged from a riding school. He spoke English quite fluently, even colloquially at times, but with a marked Gallic accent. + 

II + 

The road along which the two cavaliers were riding was unspeakably lonely and desolate⁠—an offshoot from the main Bath to Weston road. It had been quite a good secondary road once. The accounts of the county administration under date 1725 go to prove that it was completed in that year at considerable expense and with stone brought over for the purpose all the way from Draycott quarries, and for twenty years after that a coach used to ply along it between Chelwood and Redhill as well as two or three carriers, and of course there was all the traffic in connection with the Stanton markets and the Norton Fairs. But that was nigh on fifty years ago now, and somehow⁠—once the mail-coach was discontinued⁠—it had never seemed worth while to keep the road in decent repair. It had gone from bad to worse since then, and travelling on it these days either ahorse or afoot had become very unpleasant. It was full of ruts and crevasses and knee-deep in mud, as the stranger had very appositely remarked, and the stone parapet which bordered it on either side, and which had once given it such an air of solidity and of value, was broken down in very many places and threatened soon to disappear altogether. + 

The country round was as lonely and desolate as the road. And that sense of desolation seemed to pervade the very atmosphere right through the darkness which had descended on upland and valley and hill. Though nothing now could be seen through the gloom and the mist, the senses were conscious that even in broad daylight there would be nothing to see. Loneliness dwelt in the air as well as upon the moor. There were no homesteads for miles around, no cattle grazing, no pastures, no hedges, nothing⁠—just arid wasteland with here and there a group of stunted trees or an isolated yew, and tracts of rough, coarse grass not nearly good enough for cattle to eat. + 

There are vast stretches of upland equally desolate in many parts of Europe⁠—notably in Northern Spain⁠—but in England, where they are rare, they seem to gain an additional air of loneliness through the very life which pulsates in their vicinity. This bit of Somersetshire was one of them in this year of grace 1793. Despite the proximity of Bath and its fashionable life, its gaieties and vitality, distant only a little over twenty miles, and of Bristol distant less than thirty, it had remained wild and forlorn, almost savage in its grim isolation, primitive in the grandeur of its solitude. + 

III + 

The road at the point now reached by the travellers begins to slope in a gentle gradient down to the level of the Chew, a couple of miles further on: it was midway down this slope that the only sign of living humanity could be perceived in that tiny light which glimmered persistently. The air itself under its mantle of fog had become very still, only the water of some tiny moorland stream murmured feebly in its stony bed ere it lost its entity in the bosom of the river far away. + 

“Five more minutes and we be at th’ Bottom Inn,” quoth the man who was ahead in response to another impatient ejaculation from his companion. + 

“If we don’t break our necks meanwhile in this confounded darkness,” retorted the other, for his horse had just stumbled and the inexperienced rider had been very nearly pitched over into the mud. + 

“I be as anxious to arrive as you are, Mounzeer,” observed the countryman laconically. + 

“I thought you knew the way,” muttered the stranger. + 

“ ’Ave I not brought you safely through the darkness?” retorted the other; “you was pretty well ztranded at Chelwood, Mounzeer, or I be much mistaken. Who else would ’ave brought you out ’ere at this time o’ night, I’d like to know⁠—and in this weather too? You wanted to get to th’ Bottom Inn and didn’t know ’ow to zet about it: none o’ the gaffers up to Chelwood ’peared eager to ’elp you when I come along. Well, I’ve brought you to th’ Bottom Inn and⁠ ⁠… Whoa! Whoa! my beauty! Whoa, confound you! Whoa!” + 

And for the next moment or two the whole of his attention had perforce to be concentrated on the business of sticking to his saddle whilst he brought his fagged-out, ill-conditioned nag to a standstill. + 

The little glimmer of light had suddenly revealed itself in the shape of a lantern hung inside the wooden porch of a small house which had loomed out of the darkness and the fog. It stood at an angle of the road where a narrow lane had its beginnings ere it plunged into the moor beyond and was swallowed up by the all-enveloping gloom. The house was small and ugly; square like a box and built of grey stone, its front flush with the road, its rear flanked by several small outbuildings. Above the porch hung a plain signboard bearing the legend: “The Bottom Inn” in white letters upon a black ground: to right and left of the porch there was a window with closed shutters, and on the floor above two more windows⁠—also shuttered⁠—completed the architectural features of the Bottom Inn. + 

It was uncompromisingly ugly and uninviting, for beyond the faint glimmer of the lantern only one or two narrow streaks of light filtrated through the chinks of the shutters. + 

IV + 

The travellers, after some difference of opinion with their respective horses, contrived to pull up and to dismount without any untoward accident. The stranger looked about him, peering into the darkness. The place indeed appeared dismal and inhospitable enough: its solitary aspect suggested footpads and the abode of cutthroats. The silence of the moor, the pall of mist and gloom that hung over upland and valley sent a shiver through his spine. + 

“You are sure this is the place?” he queried. + 

“Can’t ye zee the zign?” retorted the other gruffly. + 

“Can you hold the horses while I go in?” + 

“I doan’t know as ’ow I can, Mounzeer. I’ve never ’eld two ’orzes all at once. Suppose they was to start kickin’ or thought o’ runnin’ away?” + 

“Running away, you fool!” muttered the stranger, whose temper had evidently suffered grievously during the weary, cold journey from Chelwood. “I’ll break your satané head if anything happens to the beasts. How can I get back to Bath save the way I came? Do you think I want to spend the night in this Godforsaken hole?” + 

Without waiting to hear any further protests from the lout, he turned into the porch and with his riding whip gave three consecutive raps against the door of the inn, followed by two more. The next moment there was the sound of a rattling of bolts and chains, the door was cautiously opened and a timid voice queried: + 

“Is it Mounzeer?” + 

“Pardieu! Who else?” growled the stranger. “Open the door, woman. I am perished with cold.” + 

With an unceremonious kick he pushed the door further open and strode in. A woman was standing in the dimly lighted passage. As the stranger walked in she bobbed him a respectful curtsey. + 

“It is all right, Mounzeer,” she said; “the Captain’s in the coffee-room. He came over from Bristol early this afternoon.” + 

“No one else here, I hope,” he queried curtly. + 

“No one, zir. It ain’t their hour not yet. You’ll ’ave the ’ouse to yourself till after midnight. After that there’ll be a bustle, I reckon. Two shiploads come into Watchet last night⁠—brandy and cloth, Mounzeer, so the Captain says, and worth a mint o’ money. The pack ’orzes will be through yere in the small hours.” + 

“That’s all right, then. Send me in a bite and a mug of hot ale.” + 

“I’ll see to it, Mounzeer.” + 

“And stay⁠—have you some sort of stabling where the man can put the two horses up for an hour’s rest?” + 

“Aye, aye, zir.” + 

“Very well then, see to that too: and see that the horses get a feed and a drink and give the man something to eat.” + 

“Very good, Mounzeer. This way, zir. I’ll see the man presently. Straight down the passage, zir. The coffee-room is on the right. The Captain’s there, waiting for ye.” + 

She closed the front door carefully, then followed the stranger to the door of the coffee-room. Outside an anxious voice was heard muttering a string of inconsequent and wholly superfluous “Whoa’s!” Of a truth the two wearied nags were only too anxious for a little rest. + 

II + 

The Bottom Inn + 

I + 

A man was sitting, huddled up in the inglenook of the small coffee-room, sipping hot ale from a tankard which he had in his hand. + 

Anything less suggestive of a rough seafaring life than his appearance it would be difficult to conceive; and how he came by the appellation “the Captain” must forever remain a mystery. He was small and spare, with thin delicate face and slender hands: though dressed in very rough garments, he was obviously ill at ease in them; his narrow shoulders scarcely appeared able to bear the weight of the coarsely made coat, and his thin legs did not begin to fill the big fisherman’s boots which reached midway up his lean thighs. His hair was lank and plentifully sprinkled with grey: he wore it tied at the nape of the neck with a silk bow which certainly did not harmonise with the rest of his clothing. A wide-brimmed felt hat something the shape of a sailor’s, but with higher crown⁠—of the shape worn by the peasantry in Brittany⁠—lay on the bench beside him. + 

When the stranger entered he had greeted him curtly, speaking in French. + 

The room was inexpressibly stuffy, and reeked of the fumes of stale tobacco, stale victuals and stale beer; but it was warm, and the stranger, stiff to the marrow and wet to the skin, uttered an exclamation of well-being as he turned to the hearth, wherein a bright fire burned cheerily. He had put his hat down when first he entered and had divested himself of his big coat: now he held one foot and then the other to the blaze and tried to infuse new life into his numbed hands. + 

“The Captain” took scant notice of his comings and goings. He did not attempt to help him off with his coat, nor did he make an effort to add another log to the fire. He sat silent and practically motionless, save when from time to time he took a sip out of his mug of ale. But whenever the newcomer came within his immediate circle of vision he shot a glance at the latter’s elegant attire⁠—the well-cut coat, the striped waistcoat, the boots of fine leather⁠—the glance was quick and comprehensive and full of scorn, a flash that lasted only an instant and was at once veiled again by the droop of the flaccid lids which hid the pale, keen eyes. + 

“When the woman has brought me something to eat and drink,” the stranger said after a while, “we can talk. I have a good hour to spare, as those miserable nags must have some rest.” + 

He too spoke in French and with an air of authority, not to say arrogance, which caused “the Captain’s” glance of scorn to light up with an added gleam of hate and almost of cruelty. But he made no remark and continued to sip his ale in silence, and for the next half-hour the two men took no more notice of one another, just as if they had never travelled all those miles and come to this desolate spot for the sole purpose of speaking with one another. During the course of that half-hour the woman brought in a dish of mutton stew, a chunk of bread, a piece of cheese and a jug of spiced ale, and placed them on the table: all of these good things the stranger consumed with an obviously keen appetite. When he had eaten and drunk his fill, he rose from the table, drew a bench into the inglenook and sat down so that his profile only was visible to his friend “the Captain.” + 

“Now, citizen Chauvelin,” he said with at attempt at ease and familiarity not unmixed with condescension, “I am ready for your news.” + 

II + 

Chauvelin had winced perceptibly both at the condescension and the familiarity. It was such a very little while ago that men had trembled at a look, a word from him: his silence had been wont to strike terror in quaking hearts. It was such a very little while ago that he had been president of the Committee of Public Safety, all powerful, the right hand of citizen Robespierre, the master sleuthhound who could track an unfortunate “suspect” down to his most hidden lair, before whose keen, pale eyes the innermost secrets of a soul stood revealed, who guessed at treason ere it was wholly born, who scented treachery ere it was formulated. A year ago he had with a word sent scores of men, women and children to the guillotine⁠—he had with a sign brought the whole machinery of the ruthless Committee to work against innocent or guilty alike on mere suspicion, or to gratify his own hatred against all those whom he considered to be the enemies of that bloody revolution which he had helped to make. Now his presence, his silence, had not even the power to ruffle the self-assurance of an upstart. + 

But in the hard school both of success and of failure through which he had passed during the last decade, there was one lesson which Armand once Marquis de Chauvelin had learned to the last letter, and that was the lesson of self-control. He had winced at the other’s familiarity, but neither by word nor gesture did he betray what he felt. + 

“I can tell you,” he merely said quite curtly, “all I have to say in far less time than it has taken you to eat and drink, citizen Adet.⁠ ⁠…” + 

But suddenly, at sound of that name, the other had put a warning hand on Chauvelin’s arm, even as he cast a rapid, anxious look all round the narrow room. + 

“Hush, man!” he murmured hurriedly, “you know quite well that that name must never be pronounced here in England. I am Martin-Roget now,” he added, as he shook off his momentary fright with equal suddenness, and once more resumed his tone of easy condescension, “and try not to forget it.” + 

Chauvelin without any haste quietly freed his arm from the other’s grasp. His pale face was quite expressionless, only the thin lips were drawn tightly over the teeth now, and a curious hissing sound escaped faintly from them as he said: + 

“I’ll try and remember, citizen, that here in England you are an aristo, the same as all these confounded English whom may the devil sweep into a bottomless sea.” + 

Martin-Roget gave a short, complacent laugh. + 

“Ah,” he said lightly, “no wonder you hate them, citizen Chauvelin. You too were an aristo here in England once⁠—not so very long ago, I am thinking⁠—special envoy to His Majesty King George, what?⁠—until failure to bring one of these satané Britishers to book made you⁠ ⁠… er⁠ ⁠… well, made you what you are now.” + 

He drew up his tall, broad figure as he spoke and squared his massive shoulders as he looked down with a fatuous smile and no small measure of scorn on the hunched-up little figure beside him. It had seemed to him that something in the nature of a threat had crept into Chauvelin’s attitude, and he, still flushed with his own importance, his immeasurable belief in himself, at once chose to measure his strength against this man who was the personification of failure and disgrace⁠—this man whom so many people had feared for so long and whom it might not be wise to defy even now. + 

“No offence meant, citizen Chauvelin,” he added with an air of patronage which once more made the other wince. “I had no wish to wound your susceptibilities. I only desired to give you timely warning that what I do here is no one’s concern, and that I will brook interference and criticism from no man.” + 

And Chauvelin, who in the past had oft with a nod sent a man to the guillotine, made no reply to this arrogant taunt. His small figure seemed to shrink still further within itself: and anon he passed his thin, claw-like hand over his face as if to obliterate from its surface any expression which might war with the utter humility wherewith he now spoke. + 

“Nor was there any offence meant on my part, citizen Martin-Roget,” he said suavely. “Do we not both labour for the same end? The glory of the Republic and the destruction of her foes?” + 

Martin-Roget gave a sigh of satisfaction. The battle had been won: he felt himself strong again⁠—stronger than before through that very act of deference paid to him by the once all-powerful Chauvelin. Now he was quite prepared to be condescending and jovial once again: + 

“Of course, of course,” he said pleasantly, as he once more bent his tall figure to the fire. “We are both servants of the Republic, and I may yet help you to retrieve your past failures, citizen, by giving you an active part in the work I have in hand. And now,” he added in a calm, businesslike manner, the manner of a master addressing a servant who has been found at fault and is taken into favour again, “let me hear your news.” + 

“I have made all the arrangements about the ship,” said Chauvelin quietly. + 

“Ah! that is good news indeed. What is she?” + 

“She is a Dutch ship. Her master and crew are all Dutch.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“That’s a pity. A Danish master and crew would have been safer.” + 

“I could not come across any Danish ship willing to take the risks,” said Chauvelin dryly. + 

“Well! And what about this Dutch ship then?” + 

“She is called the Hollandia and is habitually engaged in the sugar trade: but her master does a lot of contraband⁠—more that than fair trading, I imagine: anyway, he is willing for the sum you originally named to take every risk and incidentally to hold his tongue about the whole business.” + 

“For two thousand francs?” + 

“Yes.” + 

“And he will run the Hollandia into Le Croisic?” + 

“When you command.” + 

“And there is suitable accommodation on board her for a lady and her woman?” + 

“I don’t know what you call suitable,” said Chauvelin with a sarcastic tone, which the other failed or was unwilling to note, “and I don’t know what you call a lady. The accommodation available on board the Hollandia will be sufficient for two men and two women.” + 

“And her master’s name?” queried Martin-Roget. + 

“Some outlandish Dutch name,” replied Chauvelin. “It is spelt K U Y P E R. The devil only knows how it is pronounced.” + 

“Well! And does Captain K U Y P E R understand exactly what I want?” + 

“He says he does. The Hollandia will put into Portishead on the last day of this month. You and your guests can get aboard her any day after that you choose. She will be there at your disposal, and can start within an hour of your getting aboard. Her master will have all his papers ready. He will have a cargo of West Indian sugar on board⁠—destination Amsterdam, consignee Mynheer van Smeer⁠—everything perfectly straight and square. French aristos, émigrés on board on their way to join the army of the Princes. There will be no difficulty in England.” + 

“And none in Le Croisic. The man is running no risks.” + 

“He thinks he is. France does not make Dutch ships and Dutch crews exactly welcome just now, does she?” + 

“Certainly not. But in Le Croisic and with citizen Adet on board.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I thought that name was not to be mentioned here,” retorted Chauvelin dryly. + 

“You are right, citizen,” whispered the other, “it escaped me and.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Already he had jumped to his feet, his face suddenly pale, his whole manner changed from easy, arrogant self-assurance to uncertainty and obvious dread. He moved to the window, trying to subdue the sound of his footsteps upon the uneven floor. + 

III + 

“Are you afraid of eavesdroppers, citizen Roget?” queried Chauvelin with a shrug of his narrow shoulders. + 

“No. There is no one there. Only a lout from Chelwood who brought me here. The people of the house are safe enough. They have plenty of secrets of their own to keep.” + 

He was obviously saying all this in order to reassure himself, for there was no doubt that his fears were on the alert. With a febrile gesture he unfastened the shutters, and pushed them open, peering out into the night. + 

“Hallo!” he called. + 

But he received no answer. + 

“It has started to rain,” he said more calmly. “I imagine that lout has found shelter in an outhouse with the horses.” + 

“Very likely,” commented Chauvelin laconically. + 

“Then if you have nothing more to tell me,” quoth Martin-Roget, “I may as well think about getting back. Rain or no rain, I want to be in Bath before midnight.” + 

“Ball or supper-party at one of your duchesses?” queried the other with a sneer. “I know them.” + 

To this Martin-Roget vouchsafed no reply. + 

“How are things at Nantes?” he asked. + 

“Splendid! Carrier is like a wild beast let loose. The prisons are overfull: the surplus of accused, condemned and suspect fills the cellars and warehouses along the wharf. Priests and suchlike trash are kept on disused galliots up stream. The guillotine is never idle, and friend Carrier fearing that she might give out⁠—get tired, what?⁠—or break down⁠—has invented a wonderful way of getting rid of shoals of undesirable people at one magnificent swoop. You have heard tell of it no doubt.” + 

“Yes. I have heard of it,” remarked the other curtly. + 

“He began with a load of priests. Requisitioned an old barge. Ordered Baudet the shipbuilder to construct half a dozen portholes in her bottom. Baudet demurred: he could not understand what the order could possibly mean. But Foucaud and Lamberty⁠—Carrier’s agents⁠—you know them⁠—explained that the barge would be towed down the Loire and then up one of the smaller navigable streams which it was feared the royalists were preparing to use as a way for making a descent upon Nantes, and that the idea was to sink the barge in midstream in order to obstruct the passage of their army. Baudet, satisfied, put five of his men to the task. Everything was ready on the 16th of last month. I know the woman Pichot, who keeps a small tavern opposite La Sécherie. She saw the barge glide up the river toward the galliot where twenty-five priests of the diocese of Nantes had been living for the past two months in the company of rats and other vermin as noxious as themselves. Most lovely moonlight there was that night. The Loire looked like a living ribbon of silver. Foucaud and Lamberty directed operations, and Carrier had given them full instructions. They tied the calotins up two and two and transferred them from the galliot to the barge. It seems they were quite pleased to go. Had enough of the rats, I presume. The only thing they didn’t like was being searched. Some had managed to secrete silver ornaments about their person when they were arrested. Crucifixes and suchlike. They didn’t like to part with these, it seems. But Foucaud and Lamberty relieved them of everything but the necessary clothing, and they didn’t want much of that, seeing whither they were going. Foucaud made a good pile, so they say. Self-seeking, avaricious brute! He’ll learn the way to one of Carrier’s barges too one day, I’ll bet.” + 

He rose and with quick footsteps moved to the table. There was some ale left in the jug which the woman had brought for Martin-Roget a while ago. Chauvelin poured the contents of it down his throat. He had talked uninterruptedly, in short, jerky sentences, without the slightest expression of horror at the atrocities which he recounted. His whole appearance had become transfigured while he spoke. Gone was the urbane manner which he had learnt at courts long ago, gone was the last instinct of the gentleman sunk to proletarianism through stress of circumstances, or financial straits or even political convictions. The erstwhile Marquis de Chauvelin⁠—envoy of the Republic at the Court of St. James’⁠—had become citizen Chauvelin in deed and in fact, a part of that rabble which he had elected to serve, one of that vile crowd of bloodthirsty revolutionaries who had sullied the pure robes of Liberty and of Fraternity by spattering them with blood. Now he smacked his lips, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and burying his hands in the pockets of his breeches he stood with legs wide apart and a look of savage satisfaction settled upon his pale face. Martin-Roget had made no comment upon the narrative. He had resumed his seat by the fire and was listening attentively. Now while the other drank and paused, he showed no sign of impatience, but there was something in the look of the bent shoulders, in the rigidity of the attitude, in the large, square hands tightly clasped together which suggested the deepest interest and an intentness that was almost painful. + 

“I was at the woman Pichot’s tavern that night,” resumed Chauvelin after a while. “I saw the barge⁠—a moving coffin, what?⁠—gliding down stream towed by the galliot and escorted by a small boat. The floating battery at La Samaritaine challenged her as she passed, for Carrier had prohibited all navigation up or down the Loire until further notice. Foucaud, Lamberty, Fouquet and O’Sullivan the armourer were in the boat: they rowed up to the pontoon and Vailly the chief gunner of the battery challenged them once more. However, they had some sort of written authorisation from Carrier, for they were allowed to pass. Vailly remained on guard. He saw the barge glide further down stream. It seems that the moon at that time was hidden by a cloud. But the night was not dark and Vailly watched the barge till she was out of sight. She was towed past Trentemoult and Chantenay into the wide reach of the river just below Cheviré where, as you know, the Loire is nearly two thousand feet wide.” + 

Once more he paused, looking down with grim amusement on the bent shoulders of the other man. + 

“Well?” + 

Chauvelin laughed. The query sounded choked and hoarse, whether through horror, excitement or mere impatient curiosity it were impossible to say. + 

“Well!” he retorted with a careless shrug of the shoulders. “I was too far up stream to see anything and Vailly saw nothing either. But he heard. So did others who happened to be on the shore close by.” + 

“What did they hear?” + 

“The hammering,” replied Chauvelin curtly, “when the portholes were knocked open to let in the flood of water. And the screams and yells of five and twenty drowning priests.” + 

“Not one of them escaped, I suppose?” + 

“Not one.” + 

Once more Chauvelin laughed. He had a way of laughing⁠—just like that⁠—in a peculiar mirthless, derisive manner, as if with joy at another man’s discomfiture, at another’s material or moral downfall. There is only one language in the world which has a word to express that type of mirth; the word is Schadenfreude. + 

It was Chauvelin’s turn to triumph now. He had distinctly perceived the signs of an inward shudder which had gone right through Martin-Roget’s spine: he had also perceived through the man’s bent shoulders, his silence, his rigidity that his soul was filled with horror at the story of that abominable crime which he⁠—Chauvelin⁠—had so blandly retailed and that he was afraid to show the horror which he felt. And the man who is afraid can never climb the ladder of success above the man who is fearless. + 

IV + 

There was silence in the low raftered room for awhile: silence only broken by the crackling and sizzling of damp logs in the hearth, and the tap-tapping of a loosely fastened shutter which sounded weird and ghoulish like the knocking of ghosts against the window-frame. Martin-Roget bending still closer to the fire knew that Chauvelin was watching him and that Chauvelin had triumphed, for⁠—despite failure, despite humiliation and disgrace⁠—that man’s heart and will had never softened: he had remained as merciless, as fanatical, as before and still looked upon every sign of pity and humanity for a victim of that bloody revolution⁠—which was his child, the thing of his creation, yet worshipped by him, its creator⁠—as a crime against patriotism and against the Republic. + 

And Martin-Roget fought within himself lest something he might say or do, a look, a gesture should give the other man an indication that the horrible account of a hideous crime perpetrated against twenty-five defenceless men had roused a feeling of unspeakable horror in his heart. That was the punishment of these callous makers of a ruthless revolution⁠—that was their hell upon earth, that they were doomed to hate and to fear one another; every man feeling that the other’s hand was up against him as it had been against law and order, against the guilty and the innocent, the rebel and the defenceless; every man knowing that the other was always there on the alert, ready to pounce like a beast of prey upon any victim⁠—friend, comrade, brother⁠—who came within reach of his hand. + 

Like many men stronger than himself, Pierre Adet⁠—or Martin-Roget as he now called himself⁠—had been drawn into the vortex of bloodshed and of tyranny out of which now he no longer had the power to extricate himself. Nor had he any wish to extricate himself. He had too many past wrongs to avenge, too much injustice on the part of Fate and Circumstance to make good, to wish to draw back now that a newly-found power had been placed in the hands of men such as he through the revolt of an entire people. The sickening sense of horror which a moment ago had caused him to shudder and to turn away in loathing from Chauvelin was only like the feeble flicker of a light before it wholly dies down⁠—the light of something purer, early lessons of childhood, former ideals, earlier aspirations, now smothered beneath the passions of revenge and of hate. + 

And he would not give Chauvelin the satisfaction of seeing him wince. He was himself ashamed of his own weakness. He had deliberately thrown in his lot with these men and he was determined not to fall a victim to their denunciations and to their jealousies. So now he made a great effort to pull himself together, to bring back before his mind those memory-pictures of past tyranny and oppression which had effectually killed all sense of pity in his heart, and it was in a tone of perfect indifference which gave no loophole to Chauvelin’s sneers that he asked after awhile: + 

“And was citizen Carrier altogether pleased with the result of his patriotic efforts?” + 

“Oh, quite!” replied the other. “He has no one’s orders to take. He is proconsul⁠—virtual dictator in Nantes: and he has vowed that he will purge the city from all save its most deserving citizens. The cargo of priests was followed by one of malefactors, night-birds, cutthroats and suchlike. That is where Carrier’s patriotism shines out in all its glory. It is not only priests and aristos, you see⁠—other miscreants are treated with equal fairness.” + 

“Yes! I see he is quite impartial,” remarked Martin-Roget coolly. + 

“Quite,” retorted Chauvelin, as he once more sat down in the inglenook. And, leaning his elbows upon his knees he looked straight and deliberately into the other man’s face, and added slowly: “You will have no cause to complain of Carrier’s want of patriotism when you hand over your bag of birds to him.” + 

This time Martin-Roget had obviously winced, and Chauvelin had the satisfaction of seeing that his thrust had gone home: though Martin-Roget’s face was in shadow, there was something now in his whole attitude, in the clasping and unclasping of his large, square hands which indicated that the man was labouring under the stress of a violent emotion. In spite of this he managed to say quite coolly: “What do you mean exactly by that, citizen Chauvelin?” + 

“Oh!” replied the other, “you know well enough what I mean⁠—I am no fool, what?⁠ ⁠… or the Revolution would have no use for me. If after my many failures she still commands my services and employs me to keep my eyes and ears open, it is because she knows that she can count on me. I do keep my eyes and ears open, citizen Adet or Martin-Roget, whatever you like to call yourself, and also my mind⁠—and I have a way of putting two and two together to make four. There are few people in Nantes who do not know that old Jean Adet, the miller, was hanged four years ago, because his son Pierre had taken part in some kind of open revolt against the tyranny of the ci-devant duc de Kernogan, and was not there to take his punishment himself. I knew old Jean Adet.⁠ ⁠… I was on the Place du Bouffay at Nantes when he was hanged.⁠ ⁠…” + 

But already Martin-Roget had jumped to his feet with a muttered blasphemy. + 

“Have done, man,” he said roughly, “have done!” And he started pacing up and down the narrow room like a caged panther, snarling and showing his teeth, whilst his rough, toil-worn hands quivered with the desire to clutch an unseen enemy by the throat and to squeeze the life out of him. “Think you,” he added hoarsely, “that I need reminding of that?” + 

“No. I do not think that, citizen,” replied Chauvelin calmly, “I only desired to warn you.” + 

“Warn me? Of what?” + 

Nervous, agitated, restless, Martin-Roget had once more gone back to his seat: his hands were trembling as he held them up mechanically to the blaze and his face was the colour of lead. In contrast with his restlessness Chauvelin appeared the more calm and bland. + 

“Why should you wish to warn me?” asked the other querulously, but with an attempt at his former overbearing manner. “What are my affairs to you⁠—what do you know about them?” + 

“Oh, nothing, nothing, citizen Martin-Roget,” replied Chauvelin pleasantly, “I was only indulging the fancy I spoke to you about just now of putting two and two together in order to make four. The chartering of a smuggler’s craft⁠—aristos on board her⁠—her ostensible destination Holland⁠—her real objective Le Croisic.⁠ ⁠… Le Croisic is now the port for Nantes and we don’t bring aristos into Nantes these days for the object of providing them with a featherbed and a competence, what?” + 

“And,” retorted Martin-Roget quietly, “if your surmises are correct, citizen Chauvelin, what then?” + 

“Oh, nothing!” replied the other indifferently. “Only⁠ ⁠… take care, citizen⁠ ⁠… that is all.” + 

“Take care of what?” + 

“Of the man who brought me, Chauvelin, to ruin and disgrace.” + 

“Oh! I have heard of that legend before now,” said Martin-Roget with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders. “The man they call the Scarlet Pimpernel you mean?” + 

“Why, yes!” + 

“What have I to do with him?” + 

“I don’t know. But remember that I myself have twice been after that man here in England; that twice he slipped through my fingers when I thought I held him so tightly that he could not possibly escape and that twice in consequence I was brought to humiliation and to shame. I am a marked man now⁠—the guillotine will soon claim me for her future use. Your affairs, citizen, are no concern of mine, but I have marked that Scarlet Pimpernel for mine own. I won’t have any blunderings on your part give him yet another triumph over us all.” + 

Once more Martin-Roget swore one of his favourite oaths. + 

“By Satan and all his brood, man,” he cried in a passion of fury, “have done with this interference. Have done, I say. I have nothing to do, I tell you, with your satané Scarlet Pimpernel. My concern is with⁠ ⁠…” + 

“With the duc de Kernogan,” broke in Chauvelin calmly, “and with his daughter; I know that well enough. You want to be even with them over the murder of your father. I know that too. All that is your affair. But beware, I tell you. To begin with, the secrecy of your identity is absolutely essential to the success of your plan. What?” + 

“Of course it is. But.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“But nevertheless, your identity is known to the most astute, the keenest enemy of the Republic.” + 

“Impossible,” asserted Martin-Roget hotly. + 

“The duc de Kernogan.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Bah! He had never the slightest suspicion of me. Think you his High and Mightiness in those far-off days ever looked twice at a village lad so that he would know him again four years later? I came into this country as an émigré stowed away in a smuggler’s ship like a bundle of contraband goods. I have papers to prove that my name is Martin-Roget and that I am a banker from Brest. The worthy bishop of Brest⁠—denounced to the Committee of Public Safety for treason against the Republic⁠—was given his life and a safe conduct into Spain on the condition that he gave me⁠—Martin-Roget⁠—letters of personal introduction to various highborn émigrés in Holland, in Germany and in England. Armed with these I am invulnerable. I have been presented to His Royal Highness the Regent, and to the elite of English society in Bath. I am the friend of M. le duc de Kernogan now and the accredited suitor for his daughter’s hand.” + 

“His daughter!” broke in Chauvelin with a sneer, and his pale, keen eyes had in them a spark of malicious mockery. + 

Martin-Roget made no immediate retort to the sneer. A curious hot flush had spread over his forehead and his ears, leaving his cheeks wan and livid. + 

“What about the daughter?” reiterated Chauvelin. + 

“Yvonne de Kernogan has never seen Pierre Adet the miller’s son,” replied the other curtly. “She is now the affianced wife of Martin-Roget the millionaire banker of Brest. Tonight I shall persuade M. le duc to allow my marriage with his daughter to take place within the week. I shall plead pressing business in Holland and my desire that my wife shall accompany me thither. The duke will consent and Yvonne de Kernogan will not be consulted. The day after my wedding I shall be on board the Hollandia with my wife and father-in-law, and together we will be on our way to Nantes where Carrier will deal with them both.” + 

“You are quite satisfied that this plan of yours is known to no one, that no one at the present moment is aware of the fact that Pierre Adet, the miller’s son, and Martin-Roget, banker of Brest, are one and the same?” + 

“Quite satisfied,” replied Martin-Roget emphatically. + 

“Very well, then, let me tell you this, citizen,” rejoined Chauvelin slowly and deliberately, “that in spite of what you say I am as convinced as that I am here, alive, that your real identity will be known⁠—if it is not known already⁠—to a gentleman who is at this present moment in Bath, and who is known to you, to me, to the whole of France as the Scarlet Pimpernel.” + 

Martin-Roget laughed and shrugged his shoulders. + 

“Impossible!” he retorted. “Pierre Adet no longer exists⁠ ⁠… he never existed⁠ ⁠… much.⁠ ⁠… Anyhow, he ceased to be on that stormy day in September, 1789. Unless your pet enemy is a wizard he cannot know.” + 

“There is nothing that my pet enemy⁠—as you call him⁠—cannot ferret out if he has a mind to. Beware of him, citizen Martin-Roget. Beware, I tell you.” + 

“How can I,” laughed the other contemptuously, “if I don’t know who he is?” + 

“If you did,” retorted Chauvelin, “it wouldn’t help you⁠ ⁠… much. But beware of every man you don’t know; beware of every stranger you meet; trust no one; above all, follow no one. He is there where you least expect him under a disguise you would scarcely dream of.” + 

“Tell me who he is then⁠—since you know him⁠—so that I may duly beware of him.” + 

“No,” rejoined Chauvelin with the same slow deliberation, “I will not tell you who he is. Knowledge in this case would be a very dangerous thing.” + 

“Dangerous? To whom?” + 

“To yourself probably. To me and to the Republic most undoubtedly. No! I will not tell you who the Scarlet Pimpernel is. But take my advice, citizen Martin-Roget,” he added emphatically, “go back to Paris or to Nantes and strive there to serve your country rather than run your head into a noose by meddling with things here in England, and running after your own schemes of revenge.” + 

“My own schemes of revenge!” exclaimed Martin-Roget with a hoarse cry that was like a snarl.⁠ ⁠… It seemed as if he wanted to say something more, but that the words choked him even before they reached his lips. The hot flush died down from his forehead and his face was once more the colour of lead. He took up a log from the corner of the hearth and threw it with a savage, defiant gesture into the fire. + 

Somewhere in the house a clock struck nine. + 

V + 

Martin-Roget waited until the last echo of the gong had died away, then he said very slowly and very quietly: + 

“Forgo my own schemes of revenge? Can you even remotely guess, citizen Chauvelin, what it would mean to a man of my temperament and of my calibre to give up that for which I have toiled and striven for the past four years? Think of what I was on that day when a conglomeration of adverse circumstances turned our proposed expedition against the château de Kernogan into a disaster for our village lads, and a triumph for the duc. I was knocked down and crushed all but to death by the wheels of Mlle. de Kernogan’s coach. I managed to crawl in the mud and the cold and the rain, on my hands and knees, hurt, bleeding, half dead, as far as the presbytery of Vertou where the curé kept me hidden at risk of his own life for two days until I was able to crawl farther away out of sight. The curé did not know, I did not know then of the devilish revenge which the duc de Kernogan meant to wreak against my father. The news reached me when it was all over and I had worked my way to Paris with the few sous in my pocket which that good curé had given me, earning bed and bread as I went along. I was an ignorant lout when I arrived in Paris. I had been one of the ci-devant Kernogan’s labourers⁠—his chattel, what?⁠—little better or somewhat worse off than a slave. There I heard that my father had been foully murdered⁠—hung for a crime which I was supposed to have committed, for which I had not even been tried. Then the change in me began. For four years I starved in a garret, toiling like a galley-slave with my hands and muscles by day and at my books by night. And what am I now? I have worked at books, at philosophy, at science: I am a man of education. I can talk and discuss with the best of those d⁠⸺⁠d aristos who flaunt their caprices and their mincing manners in the face of the outraged democracy of two continents. I speak English⁠—almost like a native⁠—and Danish and German too. I can quote English poets and criticise M. de Voltaire. I am an aristo, what? For this I have worked, citizen Chauvelin⁠—day and night⁠—oh! those nights! how I have slaved to make myself what I now am! And all for the one object⁠—the sole object without which existence would have been absolutely unendurable. That object guided me, helped me to bear and to toil, it cheered and comforted me! To be even one day with the duc de Kernogan and with his daughter! to be their master! to hold them at my mercy!⁠ ⁠… to destroy or pardon as I choose!⁠ ⁠… to be the arbiter of their fate!⁠ ⁠… I have worked for four years: now my goal is in sight, and you talk glibly of forgoing my own schemes of revenge! Believe me, citizen Chauvelin,” he concluded, “it would be easier for me to hold my right hand into those flames until it hath burned to a cinder than to forgo the hope of that vengeance which has eaten into my soul. It would hurt much less.” + 

He had spoken thus at great length, but with extraordinary restraint. Never once did he raise his voice or indulge in gesture. He spoke in even, monotonous tones, like one who is reciting a lesson; and he sat straight in front of the fire, his elbow on his knee, his chin resting in his hand and his eyes fixed upon the flames. + 

Chauvelin had listened in perfect silence. The scorn, the resentful anger, the ill-concealed envy of the fallen man for the successful upstart had died out of his glance. Martin-Roget’s story, the intensity of feeling betrayed in that absolute, outward calm had caused a chord of sympathy to vibrate in the other’s atrophied heart. How well he understood that vibrant passion of hate, that longing to exact an eye for an eye, an outrage for an outrage! Was not his own life given over now to just such a longing?⁠—a mad aching desire to be even once with that hated enemy, that maddening, mocking, elusive Scarlet Pimpernel who had fooled and baffled him so often? + 

VI + 

Some few moments had gone by since Martin-Roget’s harsh, monotonous voice had ceased to echo through the low raftered room: silence had fallen between the two men⁠—there was indeed nothing more to say; the one had unburdened his overfull heart and the other had understood. They were of a truth made to understand one another, and the silence between them betokened sympathy. + 

Around them all was still, the stillness of a mist-laden night; in the house no one stirred: the shutter even had ceased to creak; only the crackling of the wood fire broke that silence which soon became oppressive. + 

Martin-Roget was the first to rouse himself from this trance-like state wherein memory was holding such ruthless sway: he brought his hands sharply down on his knees, turned to look for a moment on his companion, gave a short laugh and finally rose, saying briskly the while: + 

“And now, citizen, I shall have to bid you adieu and make my way back to Bath. The nags have had the rest they needed and I cannot spend the night here.” + 

He went to the door and opening it called a loud “Hallo, there!” + 

The same woman who had waited on him on his arrival came slowly down the stairs in response. + 

“The man with the horses,” commanded Martin-Roget peremptorily. “Tell him I’ll be ready in two minutes.” + 

He returned to the room and proceeded to struggle into his heavy coat, Chauvelin as before making no attempt to help him. He sat once more huddled up in the inglenook hugging his elbows with his thin white hands. There was a smile half scornful, but not wholly dissatisfied around his bloodless lips. When Martin-Roget was ready to go he called out quietly after him: + 

“The Hollandia remember! At Portishead on the last day of the month. Captain K U Y P E R.” + 

“Quite right,” replied Martin-Roget laconically. “I’m not like to forget.” + 

He then picked up his hat and riding whip and went out. + 

VII + 

Outside in the porch he found the woman bending over the recumbent figure of his guide. + 

“He be azleep, Mounzeer,” she said placidly, “fast azleep, I do believe.” + 

“Asleep?” cried Martin-Roget roughly, “we’ll soon see about waking him up.” + 

He gave the man a violent kick with the toe of his boot. The man groaned, stretched himself, turned over and rubbed his eyes. The light of the swinging lantern showed him the wrathful face of his employer. He struggled to his feet very quickly after that. + 

“Stir yourself, man,” cried Martin-Roget savagely, as he gripped the fellow by the shoulder and gave him a vigorous shaking. “Bring the horses along now, and don’t keep me waiting, or there’ll be trouble.” + 

“All right, Mounzeer, all right,” muttered the man placidly, as he shook himself free from the uncomfortable clutch on his shoulder and leisurely made his way out of the porch. + 

“Haven’t you got a boy or a man who can give that lout a hand with those sacré horses?” queried Martin-Roget impatiently. “He hardly knows a horse’s head from its tail.” + 

“No, zir, I’ve no one tonight,” replied the woman gently. “My man and my son they be gone down to Watchet to ’elp with the cargo and the pack-’orzes. They won’t be ’ere neither till after midnight. But,” she added more cheerfully, “I can straighten a saddle if you want it.” + 

“That’s all right then⁠—but⁠ ⁠…” + 

He paused suddenly, for a loud cry of “Hallo! Well! I’m⁠ ⁠…” rang through the night from the direction of the rear of the house. The cry expressed both surprise and dismay. + 

“What the ⸻ is it?” called Martin-Roget loudly in response. + 

“The ’orzes!” + 

“What about them?” + 

To this there was no reply, and with a savage oath and calling to the woman to show him the way Martin-Roget ran out in the direction whence had come the cry of dismay. He fell straight into the arms of his guide, who promptly set up another cry, more dismal, more expressive of bewilderment than the first. + 

“They be gone,” he shouted excitedly. + 

“Who have gone?” queried the Frenchman. + 

“The ’orzes!” + 

“The horses? What in ⸻ do you mean?” + 

“The ’orzes have gone, Mounzeer. There was no door to the ztables and they be gone.” + 

“You’re a fool,” growled Martin-Roget, who of a truth had not taken in as yet the full significance of the man’s jerky sentences. “Horses don’t walk out of the stables like that. They can’t have done if you tied them up properly.” + 

“I didn’t tie them up,” protested the man. “I didn’t know ’ow to tie the beastly nags up, and there was no one to ’elp me. I didn’t think they’d walk out like that.” + 

“Well! if they’re gone you’ll have to go and get them back somehow, that’s all,” said Martin-Roget, whose temper by now was beyond his control, and who was quite ready to give the lout a furious thrashing. + 

“Get them back, Mounzeer,” wailed the man, “ ’ow can I? In the dark, too. Besides, if I did come nose to nose wi’ ’em I shouldn’t know ’ow to get ’em. Would you, Mounzeer?” he added with bland impertinence. + 

“I shall know how to lay you out, you satané idiot,” growled Martin-Roget, “if I have to spend the night in this hole.” + 

He strode on in the darkness in the direction where a little glimmer of light showed the entrance to a wide barn which obviously was used as a rough stabling. He stumbled through a yard and over a miscellaneous lot of rubbish. It was hardly possible to see one’s hands before one’s eyes in the darkness and the fog. The woman followed him, offering consolation in the shape of a seat in the coffee-room whereon to pass the night, for indeed she had no bed to spare, and the man from Chelwood brought up the rear⁠—still ejaculating cries of astonishment rather than distress. + 

“You are that careless, man!” the woman admonished him placidly, “and I give you a lantern and all for to look after your ’orzes properly.” + 

“But you didn’t give me a ’and for to tie ’em up in their stalls, and give ’em their feed. Drat ’em! I ’ate ’orzes and all to do with ’em.” + 

“Didn’t you give ’em the feed I give you for ’em then?” + 

“No, I didn’t. Think you I’d go into one o’ them narrow stalls and get kicked for my pains.” + 

“Then they was ’ungry, pore things,” she concluded, “and went out after the ’ay what’s just outside. I don’t know ’ow you’ll ever get ’em back in this fog.” + 

There was indeed no doubt that the nags had made their way out of the stables, in that irresponsible fashion peculiar to animals, and that they had gone astray in the dark. There certainly was no sound in the night to denote their presence anywhere near. + 

“We’ll get ’em all right in the morning,” remarked the woman with her exasperating placidity. + 

“Tomorrow morning!” exclaimed Martin-Roget in a passion of fury. “And what the d⁠⸺⁠l am I going to do in the meanwhile?” + 

The woman reiterated her offers of a seat by the fire in the coffee-room. + 

“The men won’t mind ye, zir,” she said, “heaps of ’em are Frenchies like yourself, and I’ll tell ’em you ain’t a spying on ’em.” + 

“It’s no more than five mile to Chelwood,” said the man blandly, “and maybe you get a better shakedown there.” + 

“A five-mile tramp,” growled Martin-Roget, whose wrath seemed to have spent itself before the hopelessness of his situation, “in this fog and gloom, and knee-deep in mud.⁠ ⁠… There’ll be a sovereign for you, woman,” he added curtly, “if you can give me a clean bed for the night.” + 

The woman hesitated for a second or two. + 

“Well! a zovereign is tempting, zir,” she said at last. “You shall ’ave my son’s bed. I know ’e’d rather ’ave the zovereign if ’e was ever zo tired. This way, zir,” she added, as she once more turned toward the house, “mind them ’urdles there.” + 

“And where am I goin’ to zleep?” called the man from Chelwood after the two retreating figures. + 

“I’ll look after the man for you, zir,” said the woman; “for a matter of a shillin’ ’e can sleep in the coffee-room, and I’ll give ’im ’is breakfast too.” + 

“Not one farthing will I pay for the idiot,” retorted Martin-Roget savagely. “Let him look after himself.” + 

He had once more reached the porch. Without another word, and not heeding the protests and curses of the unfortunate man whom he had left standing shelterless in the middle of the yard, he pushed open the front door of the house and once more found himself in the passage outside the coffee-room. + 

But the woman had turned back a little before she followed her guest into the house, and she called out to the man in the darkness: + 

“You may zleep in any of them outhouses and welcome, and zure there’ll be a bit o’ porridge for ye in the mornin’!” + 

“Think ye I’ll stop,” came in a furious growl out of the gloom, “and conduct that d⁠⸺⁠d frogeater back to Chelwood? No fear. Five miles ain’t nothin’ to me, and ’e can keep the miserable shillin’ ’e’d ’ave give me for my pains. Let ’im get ’is ’orzes back ’izelf and get to Chelwood as best ’e can. I’m off, and you can tell ’im zo from me. It’ll make ’im sleep all the better, I reckon.” + 

The woman was obviously not of a disposition that would ever argue a matter of this sort out. She had done her best, she reckoned, both for master and man, and if they chose to quarrel between themselves that was their business and not hers. + 

So she quietly went into the house again; barred and bolted the door, and finding the stranger still waiting for her in the passage she conducted him to a tiny room on the floor above. + 

“My son’s room, Mounzeer,” she said; “I ’ope as ’ow ye’ll be comfortable.” + 

“It will do all right,” assented Martin-Roget. “Is ‘the Captain’ sleeping in the house tonight?” he added as with an afterthought. + 

“Only in the coffee-room, Mounzeer. I couldn’t give ’im a bed. ‘The Captain’ will be leaving with the pack ’orzes a couple of hours before dawn. Shall I tell ’im you be ’ere.” + 

“No, no,” he replied promptly. “Don’t tell him anything. I don’t want to see him again: and he’ll be gone before I’m awake, I reckon.” + 

“That ’e will, zir, most like. Good night, zir.” + 

“Good night. And⁠—mind⁠—that lout gets the two horses back again for my use in the morning. I shall have to make my way to Chelwood as early as may be.” + 

“Aye, aye, zir,” assented the woman placidly. It were no use, she thought, to upset the Mounzeer’s temper once more by telling him that his guide had decamped. Time enough in the morning, when she would be less busy. + 

“And my John can see ’im as far as Chelwood,” she thought to herself as she finally closed the door on the stranger and made her way slowly down the creaking stairs. + 

III + 

The Assembly Rooms + 

I + 

The sigh of satisfaction was quite unmistakable. + 

It could be heard from end to end, from corner to corner of the building. It sounded above the din of the orchestra who had just attacked with vigour the opening bars of a schottische, above the brouhaha of moving dancers and the frou-frou of skirts: it travelled from the small octagon hall, through the central salon to the tearoom, the ballroom and the cardroom: it reverberated from the gallery in the ballroom to the maids’ gallery: it distracted the ladies from their gossip and the gentlemen from their cards. + 

It was a universal, heartfelt “Ah!” of intense and pleasurable satisfaction. + 

Sir Percy Blakeney and his lady had just arrived. It was close on midnight, and the ball had positively languished. What was a ball without the presence of Sir Percy? His Royal Highness too had been expected earlier than this. But it was not thought that he would come at all, despite his promise, if the spoilt pet of Bath society remained unaccountably absent; and the Assembly Rooms had worn an air of woe even in the face of the gaily dressed throng which filled every vast room in its remotest angle. + 

But now Sir Percy Blakeney had arrived, just before the clocks had struck midnight, and exactly one minute before His Royal Highness drove up himself from the Royal Apartments. Lady Blakeney was looking more radiant and beautiful than ever before, so everyone remarked, when a few moments later she appeared in the crowded ballroom on the arm of His Royal Highness and closely followed by my lord Anthony Dewhurst and by Sir Percy himself, who had the young Duchess of Flintshire on his arm. + 

“What do you mean, you incorrigible rogue,” her Grace was saying with playful severity to her cavalier, “by coming so late to the ball? Another two minutes and you would have arrived after His Royal Highness himself: and how would you have justified such solecism, I would like to know.” + 

“By swearing that thoughts of your Grace had completely addled my poor brain,” he retorted gaily, “and that in the mental contemplation of such charms I forgot time, place, social duties, everything.” + 

“Even the homage due to truth,” she laughed. “Cannot you for once in your life be serious, Sir Percy?” + 

“Impossible, dear lady, whilst your dainty hand rests upon mine arm.” + 

II + 

It was not often that His Royal Highness graced Bath with his presence, and the occasion was made the excuse for quite exceptional gaiety and brilliancy. The new fashions of this memorable year of 1793 had defied the declaration of war and filtrated through from Paris: London milliners had not been backward in taking the hint, and though most of the more starchy dowagers obstinately adhered to the prewar fashions⁠—the huge hooped skirts, stiff stomachers, pointed waists, voluminous panniers and monumental head erections⁠—the young and smart matrons were everywhere to be seen in the new gracefully flowing skirts innocent of steel constructions, the high waist line, the pouter pigeon-like draperies over their pretty bosoms. + 

Her Grace of Flintshire looked ravishing with her curly fair hair entirely free from powder, and Lady Betty Draitune’s waist seemed to be nestling under her armpits. Of course Lady Blakeney wore the very latest thing in striped silks and gossamer-like muslin and lace, and it was hard to enumerate all the pretty débutantes and young brides who fluttered about the Assembly Rooms this night. + 

And gliding through that motley throng, bright-plumaged like a swarm of butterflies, there were a few figures dressed in sober blacks and greys⁠—the émigrés over from France⁠—men, women, young girls and gilded youth from out that seething cauldron of revolutionary France⁠—who had shaken the dust of that rampant demagogism from off their buckled shoes, taking away with them little else but their lives. Mostly chary of speech, grave in their demeanour, bearing upon their wan faces traces of that horror which had seized them when they saw all the traditions of their past tottering around them, the proletariat whom they had despised turning against them with all the fury of caged beasts let loose, their kindred and friends massacred, their King and Queen murdered. The shelter and security which hospitable England had extended to them, had not altogether removed from their hearts the awful sense of terror and of gloom. + 

Many of them had come to Bath because the more genial climate of the West of England consoled them for the inclemencies of London’s fogs. Received with open arms and with that lavish hospitality which the refugees and the oppressed had already learned to look for in England, they had gradually allowed themselves to be drawn into the fashionable life of the gay little city. The Comtesse de Tournai was here and her daughter, Lady Ffoulkes, Sir Andrew’s charming and happy bride, and M. Paul Déroulède and his wife⁠—beautiful Juliette Déroulède with the strange, haunted look in her large eyes, as of one who has looked closely on death; and M. le duc de Kernogan with his exquisite daughter, whose pretty air of seriousness and of repose sat so quaintly upon her young face. But everyone remarked as soon as M. le duc entered the rooms that M. Martin-Roget was not in attendance upon Mademoiselle, which was quite against the order of things; also that M. le duc appeared to keep a more sharp eye than usual upon his daughter in consequence, and that he asked somewhat anxiously if milor Anthony Dewhurst was in the room, and looked obviously relieved when the reply was in the negative. + 

At which trifling incident everyone who was in the know smiled and whispered, for M. le duc made it no secret that he favoured his own compatriot’s suit for Mademoiselle Yvonne’s hand rather than that of my lord Tony⁠—which⁠—as old Euclid has it⁠—is absurd. + 

III + 

But with the arrival of the royal party M. de Kernogan’s troubles began. To begin with, though M. Martin-Roget had not arrived, my lord Tony undoubtedly had. He had come in, in the wake of Lady Blakeney, but very soon he began wandering round the room obviously in search of someone. Immediately there appeared to be quite a conspiracy among the young folk in the ballroom to keep both Lord Tony’s and Mlle. Yvonne’s movements hidden from the prying eyes of M. le duc: and anon His Royal Highness, after a comprehensive survey of the ballroom and a few gracious words to his more intimate circle, wandered away to the cardroom, and as luck would have it he claimed M. le duc de Kernogan for a partner at faro. + 

Now M. le duc was a courtier of the old regime: to have disobeyed the royal summons would in his eyes have been nothing short of a crime. He followed the royal party to the cardroom, and on his way thither had one gleam of comfort in that he saw Lady Blakeney sitting on a sofa in the octagon hall engaged in conversation with his daughter, whilst Lord Anthony Dewhurst was nowhere in sight. + 

However, the gleam of comfort was very brief, for less than a quarter of an hour after he had sat down at His Highness’ table, Lady Blakeney came into the cardroom and stood thereafter for some little while close beside the Prince’s chair. The next hour after that was one of special martyrdom for the anxious father, for he knew that his daughter was in all probability sitting out in a specially secluded corner in the company of my lord Tony. + 

If only Martin-Roget were here! + 

IV + 

Martin-Roget with the eagle eyes and the airs of an accredited suitor would surely have intervened when my lord Tony in the face of the whole brilliant assembly in the ballroom, drew Mlle. de Kernogan into the seclusion of the recess underneath the gallery. + 

My lord Tony was never very glib of tongue. That peculiar dignified shyness which is one of the chief characteristics of well-bred Englishmen caused him to be tongue-tied when he had most to say. It was just with gesture and an appealing pressure of his hand upon her arm that he persuaded Yvonne de Kernogan to sit down beside him on the sofa in the remotest and darkest corner of the recess, and there she remained beside him silent and grave for a moment or two, and stole timid glances from time to time through the veil of her lashes at the finely-chiselled, expressive face of her young English lover. + 

He was pining to put a question to her, and so great was his excitement that his tongue refused him service, and she, knowing what was hovering on his lips, would not help him out, but a humorous twinkle in her dark eyes, and a faint smile round her lips lit up the habitual seriousness of her young face. + 

“Mademoiselle⁠ ⁠…” he managed to stammer at last. “Mademoiselle Yvonne⁠ ⁠… you have seen Lady Blakeney?” + 

“Yes,” she replied demurely, “I have seen Lady Blakeney.” + 

“And⁠ ⁠… and⁠ ⁠… she told you?” + 

“Yes. Lady Blakeney told me many things.” + 

“She told you that⁠ ⁠… that.⁠ ⁠… In God’s name, Mademoiselle Yvonne,” he added desperately, “do help me out⁠—it is cruel to tease me! Can’t you see that I’m nearly crazy with anxiety?” + 

Then she looked up at him, her dark eyes glowing and brilliant, her face shining with the light of a great tenderness. + 

“Nay, milor,” she said earnestly, “I had no wish to tease you. But you will own ’tis a grave and serious step which Lady Blakeney suggested that I should take. I have had no time to think⁠ ⁠… as yet.” + 

“But there is no time for thinking, Mademoiselle Yvonne,” he said naively. “If you will consent.⁠ ⁠… Oh! you will consent, will you not?” he pleaded. + 

She made no immediate reply, but gradually her hand which rested upon the sofa stole nearer and then nearer to his; and with a quiver of exquisite happiness his hand closed upon hers. The tips of his fingers touched the smooth warm palm and poor Lord Tony had to close his eyes for a moment as his sense of superlative ecstasy threatened to make him faint. Slowly he lifted that soft white hand to his lips. + 

“Upon my word, Yvonne,” he said with quiet fervour, “you will never have cause to regret that you have trusted me.” + 

“I know that well, milor,” she replied demurely. + 

She settled down a shade or two closer to him still. + 

They were now like two birds in a cosy nest⁠—secluded from the rest of the assembly, who appeared to them like dream-figures flitting in some other world that had nothing to do with their happiness. The strains of the orchestra who had struck the measure of the first figure of a contredanse sounded like fairy-music, distant, unreal in their ears. Only their love was real, their joy in one another’s company, their hands clasped closely together! + 

“Tell me,” she said after awhile, “how it all came about. It is all so terribly sudden⁠ ⁠… so exquisitely sudden. I was prepared of course⁠ ⁠… but not so soon⁠ ⁠… and certainly not tonight. Tell me just how it happened.” + 

She spoke English quite fluently, with just a charming slight accent, which he thought the most adorable thing he had ever heard. + 

“You see, dear heart,” he replied, and there was a quiver of intense feeling in his voice as he spoke, “there is a man who not only is the friend whom I love best in all the world, but is also the one whom I trust absolutely, more than myself. Two hours ago he sent for me and told me that grave danger threatened you⁠—threatened our love and our happiness, and he begged me to urge you to consent to a secret marriage⁠ ⁠… at once⁠ ⁠… tonight.” + 

“And you think this⁠ ⁠… this friend knew?” + 

“I know,” he replied earnestly, “that he knew, or he would not have spoken to me as he did. He knows that my whole life is in your exquisite hands⁠—he knows that our happiness is somehow threatened by that man Martin-Roget. How he obtained that information I could not guess⁠ ⁠… he had not the time or the inclination to tell me. I flew to make all arrangements for our marriage tonight and prayed to God⁠—as I have never prayed in my life before⁠—that you, dear heart, would deign to consent.” + 

“How could I refuse when Lady Blakeney advised? She is the kindest and dearest friend I possess. She and your friend ought to know one another. Will you not tell me who he is?” + 

“I will present him to you, dear heart, as soon as we are married,” he replied with awkward evasiveness. Then suddenly he exclaimed with boyish enthusiasm: “I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it! It is the most extraordinary thing in the world.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“What is that, milor?” she asked. + 

“That you should have cared for me at all. For of course you must care, or you wouldn’t be sitting here with me now⁠ ⁠… you would not have consented⁠ ⁠… would you?” + 

“You know that I do care, milor,” she said in her grave quiet way. “How could it be otherwise?” + 

“But I am so stupid and so slow,” he said naively. “Why! look at me now. My heart is simply bursting with all that I want to say to you, but I just can’t find the words, and I do nothing but talk rubbish and feel how you must despise me.” + 

Once more that humorous little smile played for a moment round Yvonne de Kernogan’s serious mouth. She didn’t say anything just then, but her delicate fingers gave his hand an expressive squeeze. + 

“You are not frightened?” he asked abruptly. + 

“Frightened? Of what?” she rejoined. + 

“At the step you are going to take?” + 

“Would I take it,” she retorted gently, “if I had any misgivings?” + 

“Oh! if you had.⁠ ⁠… Do you know that even now⁠ ⁠…” he continued clumsily and haltingly, “now that I have realised just what it will mean to have you⁠ ⁠… and just what it would mean to me, God help me⁠—if I were to lose you⁠ ⁠… well!⁠ ⁠… that even now I would rather go through that hell than that you should feel the least bit doubtful or unhappy about it all.” + 

Again she smiled, gently, tenderly up into his eager, boyish face. + 

“The only unhappiness,” she said gravely, “that could ever overtake me in the future would be parting from you, milor.” + 

“Oh! God bless you for that, my dear! God bless you for that! But for pity’s sake turn your dear eyes away from me or I vow I shall go crazy with joy. Men do go crazy with joy sometimes, you know, and I feel that in another moment I shall stand up and shout at the top of my voice to all the people in the room that within the next few hours the loveliest girl in all the world is going to be my wife.” + 

“She certainly won’t be that, if you do shout it at the top of your voice, milor, for father would hear you and there would be an end to our beautiful adventure.” + 

“It will be a beautiful adventure, won’t it?” he sighed with unconcealed ecstasy. + 

“So beautiful, my dear lord,” she replied with gentle earnestness, “so perfect, in fact, that I am almost afraid something must happen presently to upset it all.” + 

“Nothing can happen,” he assured her. “M. Martin-Roget is not here, and His Royal Highness is even now monopolising M. le duc de Kernogan so that he cannot get away.” + 

“Your friend must be very clever to manipulate so many strings on our behalf!” + 

“It is long past midnight now, sweetheart,” he said with sudden irrelevance. + 

“Yes, I know. I have been watching the time: and I have already thought everything out for the best. I very often go home from balls and routs in the company of Lady Ffoulkes and sleep in her house those nights. Father is always quite satisfied, when I do that, and tonight he will be doubly satisfied feeling that I shall be taken away from your society. Lady Ffoulkes is in the secret, of course, so Lady Blakeney told me, and she will be ready for me in a few minutes now: she’ll take me home with her and there I will change my dress and rest for awhile, waiting for the happy hour. She will come to the church with me and then⁠ ⁠… oh then! Oh! my dear milor!” she added suddenly with a deep sigh whilst her whole face became irradiated with a light of intense happiness, “as you say it is the most wonderful thing in all the world⁠—this⁠—our beautiful adventure together.” + 

“The parson will be ready at half-past six, dear heart, it was the earliest hour that I could secure⁠ ⁠… after that we go at once to your church and the priest will tie up any loose threads which our English parson failed to make tight. After those two ceremonies we shall be very much married, shan’t we?⁠ ⁠… and nothing can come between us, dear heart, can it?” he queried with a look of intense anxiety on his young face. + 

“Nothing,” she replied. Then she added with a short sigh: “Poor father!” + 

“Dear heart, he will only fret for a little while. I don’t believe he can really want you to marry that man Martin-Roget. It is just obstinacy on his part. He can’t have anything against me really⁠ ⁠… save of course that I am not clever and that I shall never do anything very big in the world⁠ ⁠… except to love you, Yvonne, with my whole heart and soul and with every fibre and muscle in me.⁠ ⁠… Oh! I’ll do that,” he added with boyish enthusiasm, “better than anyone else in all the world could do! And your father will, I’ll be bound, forgive me for stealing you, when he sees that you are happy, and contented, and have everything you want and⁠ ⁠… and.⁠ ⁠…” + 

As usual Lord Tony’s eloquence was not equal to all that it should have expressed. He blushed furiously and with a quaint, shy gesture, passed his large, well-shaped hand over his smooth, brown hair. “I am not much, I know,” he continued with a winning air of self-deprecation, “and you are far above me as the stars⁠—you are so wonderful, so clever, so accomplished and I am nothing at all⁠ ⁠… but⁠ ⁠… but I have plenty of highborn connections, and I have plenty of money and influential friends⁠ ⁠… and⁠ ⁠… and Sir Percy Blakeney, who is the most accomplished and finest gentleman in England, calls me his friend.” + 

She smiled at his eagerness. She loved him for his clumsy little ways, his halting speech, that big loving heart of his which was too full of fine and noble feelings to find vent in mere words. + 

“Have you ever met a finer man in all the world?” he added enthusiastically. + 

Yvonne de Kernogan smiled once more. Her recollections of Sir Percy Blakeney showed her an elegant man of the world, whose mind seemed chiefly occupied on the devising and the wearing of exquisite clothes, in the uttering of lively witticisms for the entertainment of his royal friend and the ladies of his entourage: it showed her a man of great wealth and vast possessions who seemed willing to spend both in the mere pursuit of pleasures. She liked Sir Percy Blakeney well enough, but she could not understand clever and charming Marguerite Blakeney’s adoration for her inane and foppish husband, nor the wholehearted admiration openly lavished upon him by men like Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, my lord Hastings, and others. She would gladly have seen her own dear milor choose a more sober and intellectual friend. But then she loved him for his marvellous power of wholehearted friendship, for his loyalty to those he cared for, for everything in fact that made up the sum total of his winning personality, and she pinned her faith on that other mysterious friend whose individuality vastly intrigued her. + 

“I am more interested in your anonymous friend,” she said quaintly, “than in Sir Percy Blakeney. But he too is kindness itself and Lady Blakeney is an angel. I like to think that the happiest days of my life⁠—our honeymoon, my dear lord⁠—will be spent in their house.” + 

“Blakeney has lent me Combwich Hall for as long as we like to stay there. We’ll drive thither directly after the service, dear heart, and then we’ll send a courier to your father and ask for his blessing and his forgiveness.” + 

“Poor father!” sighed Yvonne again. But evidently compassion for the father whom she had elected to deceive did not weigh over heavily in the balance of her happiness. Her little hand once more stole like a timid and confiding bird into the shelter of his firm grasp. + 

V + 

In the cardroom at His Highness’ table Sir Percy Blakeney was holding the bank and seemingly luck was dead against him. Around the various tables the ladies stood about, chattering and hindering the players. Nothing appeared serious tonight, not even the capricious chances of hazard. + 

His Royal Highness was in rare good humour, for he was winning prodigiously. + 

Her Grace of Flintshire placed her perfumed and beringed hand upon Sir Percy Blakeney’s shoulder; she stood behind his chair, chattering incessantly in a high flutey treble just like a canary. Blakeney vowed that she was so ravishing that she had put Dame Fortune to flight. + 

“You have not yet told us, Sir Percy,” she said roguishly, “how you came to arrive so late at the ball.” + 

“Alas, madam,” he sighed dolefully, “ ’twas the fault of my cravat.” + 

“Your cravat?” + 

“Aye indeed! You see I spent the whole of today in perfecting my new method for tying a butterfly bow, so as to give the neck an appearance of utmost elegance with a minimum of discomfort. Lady Blakeney will bear me out when I say that I set my whole mind to my task. Was I not busy all day m’dear?” he added, making a formal appeal to Marguerite, who stood immediately behind His Highness’ chair, and with her luminous eyes, full of merriment and shining with happiness, fixed upon her husband. + 

“You certainly spent a considerable time in front of the looking-glass,” she said gaily, “with two valets in attendance and my lord Tony an interested spectator in the proceedings.” + 

“There now!” rejoined Sir Percy triumphantly, “her ladyship’s testimony thoroughly bears me out. And now you shall see what Tony says on the matter. Tony! Where’s Tony!” he added as his lazy grey eyes sought the brilliant crowd in the cardroom. “Tony, where the devil are you?” + 

There was no reply, and anon Sir Percy’s merry gaze encountered that of M. le duc de Kernogan who, dressed in sober black, looked strangely conspicuous in the midst of this throng of bright-coloured butterflies, and whose grave eyes, as they rested on the gorgeous figure of the English exquisite, held a world of contempt in their glance. + 

“Ah! M. le duc,” continued Blakeney, returning that scornful look with his habitual good-humoured one, “I had not noticed that mademoiselle Yvonne was not with you, else I had not thought of inquiring so loudly for my friend Tony.” + 

“My lord Antoine is dancing with my daughter, Sir Percy,” said the other man gravely, in excellent if somewhat laboured English, “he had my permission to ask her.” + 

“And is a thrice happy man in consequence,” retorted Blakeney lightly, “though I fear me M. Martin-Roget’s wrath will descend upon my poor Tony’s head with unexampled vigour in consequence.” + 

“M. Martin-Roget is not here this evening,” broke in the Duchess, “and methought,” she added in a discreet whisper, “that my lord Tony was all the happier for his absence. The two young people have spent a considerable time together under the shadow of the gallery in the ballroom, and, if I mistake not, Lord Tony is making the most of his time.” + 

She talked very volubly and with a slight North-country brogue which no doubt made it a little difficult for the stranger to catch her every word. But evidently M. le duc had understood the drift of what she said, for now he rejoined with some acerbity: + 

“Mlle. de Kernogan is too well educated, I hope, to allow the attentions of any gentleman, against her father’s will.” + 

“Come, come, M. de Kernogan,” here interposed His Royal Highness with easy familiarity, “Lord Anthony Dewhurst is the son of my old friend the Marquis of Atiltone: one of our most distinguished families in this country, who have helped to make English history. He has moreover inherited a large fortune from his mother, who was a Cruche of Crewkerne and one of the richest heiresses in the land. He is a splendid fellow⁠—a fine sportsman, a loyal gentleman. His attentions to any young lady, however highborn, can be but flattering⁠—and I should say welcome to those who have her future welfare at heart.” + 

But in response to this gracious tirade, M. le duc de Kernogan bowed gravely, and his stern features did not relax as he said coldly: + 

“Your Royal Highness is pleased to take an interest in the affairs of my daughter. I am deeply grateful.” + 

There was a second’s awkward pause, for everyone felt that despite his obvious respect and deference M. le duc de Kernogan had endeavoured to inflict a snub upon the royal personage, and one or two hotheaded young fops in the immediate entourage even muttered the word: “Impertinence!” inaudibly through their teeth. Only His Royal Highness appeared not to notice anything unusual or disrespectful in M. le duc’s attitude. It seemed as if he was determined to remain good-humoured and pleasant. At any rate he chose to ignore the remark which had offended the ears of his entourage. Only those who stood opposite to His Highness, on the other side of the card table, declared afterwards that the Prince had frowned and that a haughty rejoinder undoubtedly hovered on his lips. + 

Be that as it may, he certainly did not show the slightest sign of ill-humour: quite gaily and unconcernedly he scooped up his winnings which Sir Percy Blakeney, who held the Bank, was at this moment pushing towards him. + 

“Don’t go yet, M. de Kernogan,” he said as the Frenchman made a movement to work his way out of the crowd, feeling no doubt that the atmosphere round him had become somewhat frigid if not exactly inimical, “don’t go yet, I beg of you. Pardi! Can’t you see that you have been bringing me luck? As a rule Blakeney, who can so well afford to lose, has the devil’s own good fortune, but tonight I have succeeded in getting some of my own back from him. Do not, I entreat you, break the run of my luck by going.” + 

“Oh, Monseigneur,” rejoined the old courtier suavely, “how can my poor presence influence the gods, who of a surety always preside over your Highness’ fortunes?” + 

“Don’t attempt to explain it, my dear sir,” quoth the Prince gaily. “I only know that if you go now, my luck may go with you and I shall blame you for my losses.” + 

“Oh! in that case, Monseigneur⁠ ⁠…” + 

“And with all that, Blakeney,” continued His Highness, once more taking up the cards and turning to his friend, “remember that we still await your explanation as to your coming so late to the ball.” + 

“An omission, your Royal Highness,” rejoined Blakeney, “an absence of mind brought about by your severity, and that of Her Grace. The trouble was that all my calculations with regard to the exact adjustment of the butterfly bow were upset when I realised that the set of the present day waistcoat would not harmonise with it. Less than two hours before I was due to appear at this ball my mind had to make a complete volte-face in the matter of cravats. I became bewildered, lost, utterly confused. I have only just recovered, and one word of criticism on my final efforts would plunge me now into the depths of despair.” + 

“Blakeney, you are absolutely incorrigible,” retorted His Highness with a laugh. “M. le duc,” he added, once more turning to the grave Frenchman with his wonted graciousness, “I pray you do not form your judgment on the gilded youth of England by the example of my friend Blakeney. Some of us can be serious when occasion demands, you know.” + 

“Your Highness is pleased to jest,” said M. de Kernogan stiffly. “What greater occasion for seriousness can there be than the present one. True, England has never suffered as France is suffering now, but she has engaged in a conflict against the most powerful democracy the world has ever known, she has thrown down the gauntlet to a set of human beasts of prey who are as determined as they are ferocious. England will not emerge victorious from this conflict, Monseigneur, if her sons do not realise that war is not mere sport and that victory can only be attained by the sacrifice of levity and of pleasure.” + 

He had dropped into French in response to His Highness’ remark, in order to express his thoughts more accurately. The Prince⁠—a little bored no doubt⁠—seemed disinclined to pursue the subject. Nevertheless, it seemed as if once again he made a decided effort not to show ill-humour. He even gave a knowing wink⁠—a wink!⁠—in the direction of his friend Blakeney and of Her Grace as if to beg them to set the ball of conversation rolling once more along a smoother⁠—a less boring⁠—path. He was obviously quite determined not to release M. de Kernogan from attendance near his royal person. + 

VI + 

As usual Sir Percy threw himself in the breach, filling the sudden pause with his infectious laugh: + 

“La!” he said gaily, “how beautifully M. le duc does talk. Ffoulkes,” he added, addressing Sir Andrew, who was standing close by, “I’ll wager you ten pounds to a pinch of snuff that you couldn’t deliver yourself of such splendid sentiments, even in your own native lingo.” + 

“I won’t take you, Blakeney,” retorted Sir Andrew with a laugh. “I’m no good at peroration.” + 

“You should hear our distinguished guest M. Martin-Roget on the same subject,” continued Sir Percy with mock gravity. “By Gad! can’t he talk? I feel a d⁠⸺⁠d worm when he talks about our national levity, our insane worship of sport, our⁠ ⁠… our⁠ ⁠… M. le duc,” he added with becoming seriousness and in atrocious French, “I appeal to you. Does not M. Martin-Roget talk beautifully?” + 

“M. Martin-Roget,” replied the duc gravely, “is a man of marvellous eloquence, fired by overwhelming patriotism. He is a man who must command respect wherever he goes.” + 

“You have known him long, M. le duc?” queried His Royal Highness graciously. + 

“Indeed not very long, Monseigneur. He came over as an émigré from Brest some three months ago, hidden in a smuggler’s ship. He had been denounced as an aristocrat who was furthering the cause of the royalists in Brittany by helping them plentifully with money, but he succeeded in escaping, not only with his life, but also with the bulk of his fortune.” + 

“Ah! M. Martin-Roget is rich?” + 

“He is sole owner of a rich banking business in Brest, Monseigneur, which has an important branch in America and correspondents all over Europe. Monseigneur the Bishop of Brest recommended him specially to my notice in a very warm letter of introduction, wherein he speaks of M. Martin-Roget as a gentleman of the highest patriotism and integrity. Were I not quite satisfied as to M. Martin-Roget’s antecedents and present connections I would not have ventured to present him to your Highness.” + 

“Nor would you have accepted him as a suitor for your daughter, M. le duc, c’est entendu!” concluded His Highness urbanely. “M. Martin-Roget’s wealth will no doubt cover his lack of birth.” + 

“There are plenty of highborn gentlemen devoted to the royalist cause, Monseigneur,” rejoined the duc in his grave, formal manner. “But the most just and purest of causes must at times be helped with money. The Vendéens in Brittany, the Princes at Coblentz are all sorely in need of funds.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“And M. Martin-Roget son-in-law of M. le duc de Kernogan is more likely to feed those funds than M. Martin-Roget the plain business man who has no aristocratic connections,” concluded His Royal Highness dryly. “But even so, M. le duc,” he added more gravely, “surely you cannot be so absolutely certain as you would wish that M. Martin-Roget’s antecedents are just as he has told you. Monseigneur the Bishop of Brest may have acted in perfect good faith.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Monseigneur the Bishop of Brest, your Highness, is a man who has our cause, the cause of our King and of our Faith, as much at heart as I have myself. He would know that on his recommendation I would trust any man absolutely. He was not like to make careless use of such knowledge.” + 

“And you are quite satisfied that the worthy Bishop did not act under some dire pressure⁠ ⁠… ?” + 

“Quite satisfied, Monseigneur,” replied the duc firmly. “What pressure could there be that would influence a prelate of such high integrity as Monseigneur the Bishop of Brest?” + 

VII + 

There was silence for a moment or two, during which the heavy bracket clock over the door struck the first hour after midnight. His Royal Highness looked round at Lady Blakeney, and she gave him a smile and an almost imperceptible nod. Sir Andrew Ffoulkes had in the meanwhile quietly slipped away. + 

“I understand,” said His Royal Highness quite gravely, turning back to M. le duc, “and I must crave your pardon, sir, for what must have seemed to you an indiscretion. You have given me a very clear exposé of the situation. I confess that until tonight it had seemed to me⁠—and to all your friends, Monsieur, a trifle obscure. In fact, it had been my intention to intercede with you in favour of my young friend Lord Anthony Dewhurst, who of a truth is deeply enamoured of your daughter.” + 

“Though your Highness’ wishes are tantamount to a command, yet would I humbly assert that my wishes with regard to my daughter are based upon my loyalty and my duty to my Sovereign King Louis XVII, whom may God guard and protect, and that therefore it is beyond my power now to modify them.” + 

“May God trounce you for an obstinate fool,” murmured His Highness in English, and turning his head away so that the other should not hear him. But aloud and with studied graciousness he said: + 

“M. le duc, will you not take a hand at hazard? My luck is turning, and I have faith in yours. We must fleece Blakeney tonight. He has had Satan’s own luck these past few weeks. Such good fortune becomes positively revolting.” + 

There was no more talk of Mlle. de Kernogan after that. Indeed her father felt that her future had already been discussed far too freely by all these well-wishers who of a truth were not a little indiscreet. He thought that the manners and customs of good society were very peculiar here in this fog-ridden England. What business was it of all these highborn ladies and gentlemen⁠—of His Royal Highness himself for that matter⁠—what plans he had made for Yvonne’s future? Martin-Roget was bourgeois by birth, but he was vastly rich and had promised to pour a couple of millions into the coffers of the royalist army if Mlle. de Kernogan became his wife. A couple of millions with more to follow, no doubt, and a loyal adherence to the royalist cause was worth these days all the blue blood that flowed in my lord Anthony Dewhurst’s veins. + 

So at any rate thought M. le duc this night, while His Royal Highness kept him at cards until the late hours of the morning. + 

IV + 

The Father + 

I + 

It was close on ten o’clock now in the morning on the following day, and M. le duc de Kernogan was at breakfast in his lodgings in Laura Place, when a courier was announced who was the bearer of a letter for M. le duc. + 

He thought the man must have been sent by Martin-Roget, who mayhap was sick, seeing that he had not been present at the Assembly Rooms last night, and the duc took the letter and opened it without misgivings. He read the address on the top of the letter: “Combwich Hall”⁠—a place unknown to him, and the first words of the letter: “Dear father!” And even then he had no misgivings. + 

In fact he had to read the letter through three times before the full meaning of its contents had penetrated into his brain. Whilst he read, he sat quite still, and even the hand which held the paper had not the slightest tremor. When he had finished he spoke quite quietly to his valet: + 

“Give the courier a glass of ale, Frédérick,” he said, “and tell him he can go; there is no answer. And⁠—stay,” he added, “I want you to go round at once to M. Martin-Roget’s lodgings and ask him to come and speak with me as early as possible.” + 

The valet left the room, and M. le duc deliberately read through the letter from end to end for the fourth time. There was no doubt, no possible misapprehension. His daughter Yvonne de Kernogan had eloped clandestinely with my lord Anthony Dewhurst and had been secretly married to him in the small hours of the morning in the Protestant church of St. James, and subsequently before a priest of her own religion in the Priory Church of St. John the Evangelist. + 

She apprised her father of this fact in a few sentences which purported to be dictated by profound affection and filial respect, but in which M. de Kernogan failed to detect the slightest trace of contrition. Yvonne! his Yvonne! the sole representative now of the old race⁠—eloped like a kitchen-wench! Yvonne! his daughter! his asset for the future! his thing! his fortune! that which he meant with perfect egoism to sacrifice on the altar of his own beliefs and his own loyalty to the kingship of France! Yvonne had taken her future in her own hands! She knew that her hand, her person, were the purchase price of so many millions to be poured into the coffers of the royalist cause, and she had disposed of both, in direct defiance of her father’s will and of her duty to her King and to his cause! + 

Yvonne de Kernogan was false to her traditions, false to her father! false to her King and country! In the years to come when the chroniclers of the time came to write the histories of the great families that had rallied round their King in the hour of his deadly peril, the name of Kernogan would be erased from those glorious pages. The Kernogans will have failed in their duty, failed in their loyalty! Oh! the shame of it all! The shame!! + 

The duc was far too proud a gentleman to allow his valet to see him under the stress of violent emotion, but now that he was alone his thin, hard face⁠—with that air of gravity which he had transmitted to his daughter⁠—became distorted with the passion of unbridled fury; he tore the letter up into a thousand little pieces and threw the fragments into the fire. On the bureau beside him there stood a miniature of Yvonne de Kernogan painted by Hall three years ago, and framed in a circlet of brilliants. M. le duc’s eyes casually fell upon it; he picked it up and with a violent gesture of rage threw it on the floor and stamped upon it with his heel, destroying in this paroxysm of silent fury a work of art worth many hundred pounds. + 

His daughter had deceived him. She had also upset all his plans whereby the army of M. le Prince de Condé would have been enriched by a couple of million francs. In addition to the shame upon her father, she had also brought disgrace upon herself and her good name, for she was a minor and this clandestine marriage, contracted without her father’s consent, was illegal in France, illegal everywhere: save perhaps in England⁠—of this M. de Kernogan was not quite sure, but he certainly didn’t care. And in this solemn moment he registered a vow that never as long as he lived would he be reconciled to that English nincompoop who had dared to filch his daughter from him, and never⁠—as long as he lived⁠—would he by his consent render the marriage legal, and the children born of that wedlock legitimate in the eyes of his country’s laws. + 

A calm akin to apathy had followed his first outbreak of fury. He sat down in front of the fire, and buried his chin in his hand. Something of course must be done to get his daughter back. If only Martin-Roget were here, he would know better how to act. Would Martin-Roget stick to his bargain and accept the girl for wife, now that her fame and honour had been irretrievably tarnished? There was the question which the next half-hour would decide. M. de Kernogan cast a feverish, anxious look on the clock. Half an hour had gone by since Frédérick went to seek Martin-Roget, and the latter had not yet appeared. + 

Until he had seen Martin-Roget and spoken with Martin-Roget M. de Kernogan could decide nothing. For one brief, mad moment, the project had formed itself in his disordered brain to rush down to Combwich Hall and provoke that impudent Englishman who had stolen his daughter: to kill him or be killed by him; in either case Yvonne would then be parted from him forever. But even then, the thought of Martin-Roget brought more sober reflection. Martin-Roget would see to it. Martin-Roget would know what to do. After all, the outrage had hit the accredited lover just as hard as the father. + 

But why in the name of ⸻ did Martin-Roget not come? + 

II + 

It was past midday when at last Martin-Roget knocked at the door of M. le duc’s lodgings in Laura Place. The older man had in the meanwhile gone through every phase of overwhelming emotions. The outbreak of unreasoning fury⁠—when like a maddened beast that bites and tears he had broken his daughter’s miniature and trampled it under foot⁠—had been followed by a kind of dull apathy, when for close upon an hour he had sat staring into the flames, trying to grapple with an awful reality which seemed to elude him all the time. He could not believe that this thing had really happened: that Yvonne, his well-bred dutiful daughter, who had shown such marvellous courage and presence of mind when the necessity of flight and of exile had first presented itself in the wake of the awful massacres and wholesale executions of her own friends and kindred, that she should have eloped⁠—like some flirtatious wench⁠—and outraged her father in this monstrous fashion, by a clandestine marriage with a man of alien race and of a heretical religion! M. de Kernogan could not realise it. It passed the bounds of possibility. The very flames in the hearth seemed to dance and to mock the bare suggestion of such an atrocious transgression. + 

To this gloomy numbing of the senses had succeeded the inevitable morbid restlessness: the pacing up and down the narrow room, the furtive glances at the clock, the frequent orders to Frédérick to go out and see if M. Martin-Roget was not yet home. For Frédérick had come back after his first errand with the astounding news that M. Martin-Roget had left his lodgings the previous day at about four o’clock, and had not been seen or heard of since. In fact his landlady was very anxious about him and was sorely tempted to see the town-crier on the subject. + 

Four times did Frédérick have to go from Laura Place to the Bear Inn in Union Street, where M. Martin-Roget lodged, and three times he returned with the news that nothing had been heard of Mounzeer yet. The fourth time⁠—it was then close on midday⁠—he came back running⁠—thankful to bring back the good tidings, since he was tired of that walk from Laura Place to the Bear Inn. M. Martin-Roget had come home. He appeared very tired and in rare ill-humour: but Frédérick had delivered the message from M. le duc, whereupon M. Martin-Roget had become most affable and promised that he would come round immediately. In fact he was even then treading hard on Frédérick’s heels. + 

III + 

“My daughter has gone! She left the ball clandestinely last night, and was married to Lord Anthony Dewhurst in the small hours of the morning. She is now at a place called Combwich Hall⁠—with him!” + 

M. le duc de Kernogan literally threw these words in Martin-Roget’s face, the moment the latter had entered the room, and Frédérick had discreetly closed the door. + 

“What? What?” stammered the other vaguely. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?” he added, bewildered at the duc’s violence, tired after his night’s adventure and the long ride in the early morning, irritable with want of sleep and decent food. He stared, uncomprehending, at the duc, who had once more started pacing up and down the room, like a caged beast, with hands tightly clenched behind his back, his eyes glowering both at the newcomer and at the imaginary presence of his most bitter enemy⁠—the man who had dared to come between him and his projects for his daughter. + 

Martin-Roget passed his hand across his brow like a man who is not yet fully awake. + 

“What do you mean?” he reiterated hazily. + 

“Just what I say,” retorted the other roughly. “Yvonne has eloped with that nincompoop Lord Anthony Dewhurst. They have gone through some sort of marriage ceremony together. And she writes me a letter this morning to tell me that she is quite happy and contented and spending her honeymoon at a place called Combwich Hall. Honeymoon!” he repeated savagely, as if to lash his fury up anew, “Tsha!” + 

Martin-Roget on the other hand was not the man to allow himself to fall into a state of frenzy, which would necessarily interfere with calm consideration. + 

He had taken the fact in now. Yvonne’s elopement with his English rival, the clandestine marriage, everything. But he was not going to allow his inward rage to obscure his vision of the future. He did not spend the next precious seconds⁠—as men of his race are wont to do⁠—in smashing things around him, in raving and fuming and gesticulating. No. That was not the temper M. Martin-Roget was in at this moment when Fate and a girl’s folly were ranging themselves against his plans. His friend, citizen Chauvelin, would have envied him his calm in the face of this disaster. + 

Whilst M. le duc still stormed and raved, Martin-Roget sat down quietly in front of the fire, rested his chin in his hand and waited for a lull in the other man’s paroxysm ere he spoke. + 

“From your attitude, M. le duc,” he then said quietly, hiding obvious sarcasm behind a veil of studied deference, “from your attitude I gather that your wishes with regard to Mlle. de Kernogan have undergone no modification. You would still honour me by desiring that she should become my wife?” + 

“I am not in the habit of changing my mind,” said M. le duc gruffly. He desired the marriage, he coveted Martin-Roget’s millions for the royalist cause, but he had no love for the man. All the pride of the Kernogans, their long line of ancestry, rebelled against the thought of a fair descendant of this glorious race being allied to a roturier⁠—a bourgeois⁠—a tradesman, what? and the cause of King and country counted few greater martyrdoms than that of the duc de Kernogan whenever he met the banker Martin-Roget on an equal social footing. + 

“Then there is not much harm done,” rejoined the latter coolly; “the marriage is not a legal one. It need not even be dissolved⁠—Mademoiselle de Kernogan is still Mademoiselle de Kernogan and I her humble and faithful adorer.” + 

M. le duc paused in his restless walk. + 

“You would⁠ ⁠…” he stammered, then checked himself, turning abruptly away. He had some difficulty in hiding the scorn wherewith he regarded the other’s coolness. Bourgeois blood was not to be gainsaid. The tradesman⁠—or banker, whatever he was⁠—who hankered after an alliance with Mademoiselle de Kernogan, and was ready to lay down a couple of millions for the privilege⁠—was not to be deterred from his purpose by any considerations of pride or of honour. M. le duc was satisfied and reassured, but he despised the man for his leniency for all that. + 

“The marriage is no marriage at all according to the laws of France,” reiterated Martin-Roget calmly. + 

“No, it is not,” assented the Duke roughly. + 

For a while there was silence: Martin-Roget seemed immersed in his own thoughts and not to notice the febrile comings and goings of the other man. + 

“What we have to do, M. le duc,” he said after a while, “is to induce Mlle. de Kernogan to return here immediately.” + 

“How are you going to accomplish that?” sneered the Duke. + 

“Oh! I was not suggesting that I should appear in the matter at all,” rejoined Martin-Roget with a shrug of the shoulders. + 

“Then how can I⁠ ⁠… ?” + 

“Surely⁠ ⁠…” argued the younger man tentatively. + 

“You mean⁠ ⁠… ?” + 

Martin-Roget nodded. Despite these ambiguous half-spoken sentences the two men had understood one another. + 

“We must get her back, of course,” assented the Duke, who had suddenly become as calm as the other man. + 

“There is no harm done,” reiterated Martin-Roget with slow and earnest emphasis. + 

Whereupon the Duke, completely pacified, drew a chair close to the hearth and sat down, leaning his elbows on his knees and holding his fine, aristocratic hands to the blaze. + 

Frédérick came in half an hour later to ask if M. le duc would have his luncheon. He found the two gentlemen sitting quite close together over the dying embers of a fire that had not been fed for close upon an hour: and that prince of valets was glad to note that M. le duc’s temper had quite cooled down and that he was talking calmly and very affably to M. Martin-Roget. + 

V + 

The Nest + 

I + 

There are lovely days in England sometimes in November or December, days when the departing year strives to make us forget that winter is nigh, and autumn smiles, gentle and benignant, caressing with a still tender kiss the last leaves of the scarlet oak which linger on the boughs, and touching up with a vivid brush the evergreen verdure of bay trees, of ilex and of yew. The sky is of that pale, translucent blue which dwellers in the South never see, with the soft transparency of an aquamarine as it fades into the misty horizon at midday. And at dusk the thrushes sing: “Kiss me quick! kiss me quick! kiss me quick” in the naked branches of old acacias and chestnuts, and the robins don their crimson waistcoats and dart in and out among the coppice and through the feathery arms of larch and pine. And the sun which tips the prickly points of holly leaves with gold, joins in this merry make-believe that winter is still a very, very long way off, and that mayhap he has lost his way altogether, and is never coming to this balmy beautiful land again. + 

Just such a day was the penultimate one of November, 1793, when Lady Anthony Dewhurst sat at a desk in the wide bay window of the drawing-room in Combwich Hall, trying to put into a letter to Lady Blakeney all that her heart would have wished to express of love and gratitude and happiness. + 

Three whole days had gone by since that exciting night, when before break of day in the dimly-lighted old church, in the presence of two or three faithful friends, she had plighted her troth to Lord Anthony: even whilst other kind friends⁠—including His Royal Highness⁠—formed part of the little conspiracy which kept her father occupied and, if necessary, would have kept M. Martin-Roget out of the way. Since then her life had been one continuous dream of perfect bliss. From the moment when after the second religious ceremony in the Roman Catholic church she found herself alone in the carriage with milor, and felt his arms⁠—so strong and yet so tender⁠—closing round her and his lips pressed to hers in the first masterful kiss of complete possession, until this hour when she saw his tall, elegant figure hurrying across the garden toward the gate and suddenly turning toward the window whence he knew that she was watching him, every hour and every minute had been nothing but unalloyed happiness. + 

Even there where she had looked for sorrow and difficulty her path had been made smooth for her. Her father, who she had feared would prove hard and irreconcilable, had been tender and forgiving to such an extent that tears almost of shame would gather in her eyes whenever she thought of him. + 

As soon as she arrived at Combwich Hall she had written a long and deeply affectionate letter to her father, imploring his forgiveness for the deception and unfilial conduct which on her part must so deeply have grieved him. She pleaded for her right to happiness in words of impassioned eloquence, she pleaded for her right to love and to be loved, for her right to a home, which a husband’s devotion would make a paradise for her. + 

This letter she had sent by special courier to her father and the very next day she had his reply. She had opened the letter with trembling fingers, fearful lest her father’s harshness should mar the perfect serenity of her life. She was afraid of what he would say, for she knew her father well: knew his faults as well as his qualities, his pride, his obstinacy, his unswerving determination and his loyalty to the King’s cause⁠—all of which must have been deeply outraged by his daughter’s high-handed action. But as she began to read, astonishment, amazement at once filled her soul: she could hardly trust her comprehension, hardly believe that what she read could indeed be reality, and not just the continuance of the happy dream wherein she was dwelling these days. + 

Her father⁠—gently reproachful⁠—had not one single harsh word to utter. He would not, he said, at the close of his life, after so many bitter disappointments, stand in the way of his daughter’s happiness: “You should have trusted me, my child,” he wrote: and indeed Yvonne could not believe her eyes. “I had no idea that your happiness was at stake in this marriage, or I should never have pressed the claims of my own wishes in the matter. I have only you in the world left, now that misery and exile are to be my portion! Is it likely that I would allow any personal desires to weigh against my love for you?” + 

Happy as she was Yvonne cried⁠—cried bitterly with remorse and shame when she read that letter. How could she have been so blind, so senseless as to misjudge her father so? Her young husband found her in tears, and had much ado to console her: he too read the letter and was deeply touched by the kind reference to himself contained therein: “My lord Anthony is a gallant gentleman,” wrote M. le duc de Kernogan, “he will make you happy, my child, and your old father will be more than satisfied. All that grieves me is that you did not trust me sooner. A clandestine marriage is not worthy of a daughter of the Kernogans.” + 

“I did speak most earnestly to M. le duc,” said Lord Tony reflectively, “when I begged him to allow me to pay my addresses to you. But then,” he added cheerfully, “I am such a clumsy lout when I have to talk at any length⁠—and especially clumsy when I have to plead my own cause. I suppose I put my case so badly before your father, m’dear, that he thought me three parts an idiot and would not listen to me.” + 

“I too begged and entreated him, dear,” she said with a smile, “but he was very determined then and vowed that I should marry M. Martin-Roget despite my tears and protestations. Dear father! I suppose he didn’t realise that I was in earnest.” + 

“He has certainly accepted the inevitable very gracefully,” was my lord Tony’s final comment. + 

II + 

Then they read the letter through once more, sitting close together, he with one arm round her shoulder, she nestling against his chest, her hair brushing against his lips and with the letter in her hands which she could scarcely read for the tears of joy which filled her eyes. + 

“I don’t feel very well today,” the letter concluded; “the dampness and the cold have got into my bones: moreover you two young love birds will not desire company just yet, but tomorrow if the weather is more genial I will drive over to Combwich in the afternoon, and perhaps you will give me supper and a bed for the night. Send me word by the courier who will forthwith return to Bath if this will be agreeable to you both.” + 

Could anything be more adorable, more delightful? It was just the last drop that filled Yvonne’s cup of happiness right up to the brim. + 

III + 

The next afternoon she sat at her desk in order to tell Lady Blakeney all about it. She made out a copy of her father’s letter and put that in with her own, and begged dear Lady Blakeney to see Lady Ffoulkes forthwith and tell her all that had happened. She herself was expecting her father every minute and milor Tony had gone as far as the gate to see if the barouche was in sight. + 

Half an hour later M. de Kernogan had arrived and his daughter lay in his arms, happy, beyond the dreams of men. He looked rather tired and wan and still complained that the cold had got into his bones: evidently he was not very well and Yvonne after the excitement of the meeting felt not a little anxious about him. As the evening wore on he became more and more silent; he hardly would eat anything and soon after eight o’clock he announced his desire to retire to bed. + 

“I am not ill,” he said as he kissed his daughter and bade her a fond “Good night,” “only a little wearied⁠ ⁠… with emotion no doubt. I shall be better after a night’s rest.” + 

He had been quite cordial with my lord Tony, though not effusive, which was only natural⁠—he was at all times a very reserved man, and⁠—unlike those of his race⁠—never demonstrative in his manner: but with his daughter he had been singularly tender, with a wistful affection which almost suggested remorse, even though it was she who, on his arrival, had knelt down before him and had begged for his blessing and his forgiveness. + 

IV + 

But the following morning he appeared to be really ill: his cheeks looked sunken, almost livid, his eyes dim and hollow. Nevertheless he would not hear of staying on another day or so. + 

“No, no,” he declared emphatically, “I shall be better in Bath. It is more sheltered there, here the north winds would drive me to my bed very quickly. I shall take a course of baths at once. They did me a great deal of good before, you remember, Yvonne⁠—in September, when I caught a chill⁠ ⁠… they soon put me right. That is all that ails me now.⁠ ⁠… I’ve caught a chill.” + 

He did his best to reassure his daughter, but she was far from satisfied: more especially as he hardly would touch the cup of chocolate which she had prepared for him with her own hands. + 

“I shall be quite myself again in Bath,” he declared, “and in a day or two when you can spare the time⁠—or when milor can spare you⁠—perhaps you will drive over to see how the old father is getting on, eh?” + 

“Indeed,” she said firmly, “I shall not allow you to go to Bath alone. If you will go, I shall accompany you.” + 

“Nay!” he protested, “that is foolishness, my child. The barouche will take me back quite comfortably. It is less than two hours’ drive and I shall be quite safe and comfortable.” + 

“You will be quite safe and comfortable in my company,” she retorted with a tender, anxious glance at his pale face and the nervous tremor of his hands. “I have consulted with my dear husband and he has given his consent that I should accompany you.” + 

“But you can’t leave milor like that, my child,” he protested once more. “He will be lonely and miserable without you.” + 

“Yes. I think he will,” she said wistfully. “But he will be all the happier when you are well again, and I can return to Combwich satisfied.” + 

Whereupon M. le duc yielded. He kissed and thanked his daughter and seemed even relieved at the prospect of her company. The barouche was ordered for eleven o’clock, and a quarter of an hour before that time Lord Tony had his young wife in his arms, bidding her a sad farewell. + 

“I hate your going from me, sweetheart,” he said as he kissed her eyes, her hair, her lips. “I cannot bear you out of my sight even for an hour⁠ ⁠… let alone a couple of days.” + 

“Yet I must go, dear heart,” she retorted, looking up with that sweet, grave smile of hers into his eager young face. “I could not let him travel alone⁠ ⁠… could I?” + 

“No, no,” he assented somewhat dubiously, “but remember, dear heart, that you are infinitely precious and that I shall scarce live for sheer anxiety until I have you here, safe, once more in my arms.” + 

“I’ll send you a courier this evening,” she rejoined, as she extricated herself gently from his embrace, “and if I can come back tomorrow⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I’ll ride over to Bath in any case in the morning so that I may escort you back if you really can come.” + 

“I will come if I am reassured about father. Oh, my dear lord,” she added with a wistful little sigh, “I knew yesterday morning that I was too happy, and that something would happen to mar the perfect felicity of these last few days.” + 

“You are not seriously anxious about M. le duc’s health, dear heart?” + 

“No, not seriously anxious. Farewell, milor. It is au revoir⁠ ⁠… a few hours and we’ll resume our dream.” + 

V + 

There was nothing in all that to arouse my lord Tony’s suspicions. All day he was miserable and forlorn because Yvonne was not there⁠—but he was not suspicious. + 

Fate had a blow in store for him, from which he was destined never wholly to recover, but she gave him no warning, no premonition. He spent the day in making up arrears of correspondence, for he had a large private fortune to administer⁠—trust funds on behalf of brothers and sisters who were minors⁠—and he always did it conscientiously and to the best of his ability. The last few days he had lived in a dream and there was an accumulation of business to go through. In the evening he expected the promised courier, who did not arrive: but his was not the sort of disposition that would fret and fume because of a contretemps which might be attributable to the weather⁠—it had rained heavily since afternoon⁠—or to sundry trifling causes which he at Combwich, ten or a dozen miles from Bath, could not estimate. He had no suspicions even then. How could he have? How could he guess? Nevertheless when he ultimately went to bed, it was with the firm resolve that he would in any case go over to Bath in the morning and remain there until Yvonne was able to come back with him. + 

Combwich without her was anyhow unendurable. + 

VI + 

He started for Bath at nine o’clock in the morning. It was still raining hard. It had rained all night and the roads were very muddy. He started out without a groom. A little after half-past ten, he drew rein outside his house in Chandos Buildings, and having changed his clothes he started to walk to Laura Place. The rain had momentarily left off, and a pale wintry sun peeped out through rolling banks of grey clouds. He went round by way of Saw Close and the Upper Borough Walls, as he wanted to avoid the fashionable throng that crowded the neighbourhood of the Pump Room and the Baths. His intention was to seek out the Blakeneys at their residence in the Circus after he had seen Yvonne and obtained news of M. le duc. + 

He had no suspicions. Why should he have? + 

The Abbey clock struck a quarter-past eleven when finally he knocked at the house in Laura Place. Long afterwards he remembered how just at that moment a dense grey mist descended into the valley. He had not noticed it before, now he saw that it had enveloped this part of the city so that he could not even see clearly across the Place. + 

A woman came to open the door. Lord Tony then thought this strange considering how particular M. le duc always was about everything pertaining to the management of his household: “The house of a poor exile,” he was wont to say, “but nevertheless that of a gentleman.” + 

“Can I go straight up?” he asked the woman, who he thought was standing ostentatiously in the hall as if to bar his way. “I desire to see M. le duc.” + 

“Ye can walk upstairs, zir,” said the woman, speaking with a broad Somersetshire accent, “but I doubt me if ye’ll see ’is Grace the Duke. ’Es been gone these two days.” + 

Tony had paid no heed to her at first; he had walked across the narrow hall to the oak staircase, and was halfway up the first flight when her last words struck upon his ear⁠ ⁠… quite without meaning for the moment⁠ ⁠… but nevertheless he paused, one foot on one tread, and the other two treads below⁠ ⁠… and he turned round to look at the woman, a swift frown across his smooth forehead. + 

“Gone these two days,” he repeated mechanically; “what do you mean?” + 

“Well! ’Is Grace left the day afore yesterday⁠—Thursday it was.⁠ ⁠… ’Is man went yesterday afternoon with luggage and sich⁠ ⁠… ’e went by coach ’e did.⁠ ⁠… Leave off,” she cried suddenly; “what are ye doin’? Ye’re ’urtin’ me.” + 

For Lord Tony had rushed down the stairs again and was across the hall, gripping the unoffending woman by the wrist and glaring into her expressionless face until she screamed with fright. + 

“I beg your pardon,” he said humbly as he released her wrist: all the instincts of the courteous gentleman arrayed against his loss of control. “I⁠ ⁠… I forgot myself for the moment,” he stammered; “would you mind telling me again⁠ ⁠… what⁠ ⁠… what you said just now?” + 

The woman was prepared to put on the airs of outraged dignity, she even glanced up at the malapert with scorn expressed in her small beady eyes. But at sight of his face her anger and her fears both fell away from her. Lord Tony was white to the lips, his cheeks were the colour of dead ashes, his mouth trembled, his eyes alone glowed with ill-repressed anxiety. + 

“ ’Is Grace,” she said with slow emphasis, for of a truth she thought that the young gentleman was either sick or daft, “ ’Is Grace left this ’ouse the day afore yesterday in a hired barouche. ’Is man⁠—Frederick⁠—went yesterday afternoon with the liggage. ’E caught the Bristol coach at two o’clock. I was ’is Grace’s ’ousekeeper and I am to look after the ’ouse and the zervants until I ’ear from ’is Grace again. Them’s my orders. I know no more than I’m tellin’ ye.” + 

“But His Grace returned here yesterday forenoon,” argued Lord Tony calmly, mechanically, as one who would wish to convince an obstinate child. “And my lady⁠ ⁠… Mademoiselle Yvonne, you know⁠ ⁠… was with him.” + 

“Noa! Noa!” said the woman placidly. “ ’Is Grace ’asn’t been near this ’ouse come Thursday afternoon, and ’is man left yesterday wi’ th’ liggage. Why!” she added confidentially, “ ’e ain’t gone far. It was all zettled that zuddint I didn’t know nothing about it myzelf till I zeed Mr. Frederick start off wi’ th’ liggage. Not much liggage neither it wasn’t. Sure but ’is Grace’ll be ’ome zoon. ’E can’t ’ave gone far. Not wi’ that bit o’ liggage. Zure.” + 

“But my lady⁠ ⁠… Mademoiselle Yvonne.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Lor, zir, didn’t ye know? Why ’twas all over th’ town o’ Tuesday as ’ow Mademozell ’ad eloped with my lord Anthony Dew’urst, and.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Yes! yes! But you have seen my lady since?” + 

“Not clapped eyes on ’er, zir, since she went to the ball come Monday evenin’. An’ a picture she looked in ’er white gown.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“And⁠ ⁠… did His Grace leave no message⁠ ⁠… for⁠ ⁠… for anyone?⁠ ⁠… no letter?” + 

“Ah, yes, now you come to mention it, zir. Mr. Frederick ’e give me a letter yesterday. ‘ ’Is Grace,’ sez ’e, ‘left this yere letter on ’is desk. I just found it,’ sez ’e. ‘If my lord Anthony Dew’urst calls,’ sez ’e, ‘give it to ’im.’ I’ve got the letter zomewhere, zir. What may your name be?” + 

“I am Lord Anthony Dewhurst,” replied the young man mechanically. + 

“Your pardon, my lord, I’ll go fetch th’ letter.” + 

VII + 

Lord Tony never moved while the woman shuffled across the passage and down the back stairs. He was like a man who has received a knockout blow and has not yet had time to recover his scattered senses. At first when the woman spoke, his mind had jumped to fears of some awful accident⁠ ⁠… runaway horses⁠ ⁠… a broken barouche⁠ ⁠… or a sudden aggravation of the duc’s ill-health. But soon he was forced to reject what now would have seemed a consoling thought: had there been an accident, he would have heard⁠—a rumour would have reached him⁠—Yvonne would have sent a courier. He did not know yet what to think, his mind was like a slate over which a clumsy hand had passed a wet sponge⁠—impressions, recollections, above all a hideous, nameless fear, were all blurred and confused within his brain. + 

The woman came back carrying a letter which was crumpled and greasy from a prolonged sojourn in the pocket of her apron. Lord Tony took the letter and broke its heavy seal. The woman watched him, curiously, pityingly now, for he was good to look on, and she scented the significance of the tragedy which she had been the means of revealing to him. But he had become quite unconscious of her presence, of everything in fact save those few sentences, written in French, in a cramped hand, and which seemed to dance a wild saraband before his eyes: + 

“Milor⁠— + 

“You tried to steal my daughter from me, but I have taken her from you now. By the time this reaches you we shall be on the high seas on our way to Holland, thence to Coblentz, where Mademoiselle de Kernogan will in accordance with my wishes be united in lawful marriage to M. Martin-Roget whom I have chosen to be her husband. She is not and never was your wife. As far as one may look into the future, I can assure you that you will never in life see her again.” + 

And to this monstrous document of appalling callousness and cold-blooded cruelty there was appended the signature of André Dieudonné Duc de Kernogan. + 

But unlike the writer thereof Lord Anthony Dewhurst neither stormed nor raged: he did not even tear the execrable letter into an hundred fragments. His firm hand closed over it with one convulsive clutch, and that was all. Then he slipped the crumpled paper into his pocket. Quite deliberately he took out some money and gave a piece of silver to the woman. + 

“I thank you very much,” he said somewhat haltingly. “I quite understand everything now.” + 

The woman curtseyed and thanked him; tears were in her eyes, for it seemed to her that never had she seen such grief depicted upon any human face. She preceded him to the hall door and held it open for him, while he passed out. After the brief gleam of sunshine it had started to rain again, but he didn’t seem to care. The woman suggested fetching a hackney coach, but he refused quite politely, quite gently: he even lifted his hat as he went out. Obviously he did not know what he was doing. Then he went out into the rain and strode slowly across the Place. + 

VI + 

The Scarlet Pimpernel + 

Instinct kept him away from the more frequented streets⁠—and instinct after awhile drew him in the direction of his friend’s house at the corner of The Circus. Sir Percy Blakeney had not gone out fortunately: the lackey who opened the door to my lord Tony stared astonished and almost paralysed for the moment at the extraordinary appearance of his lordship. Rain dropped down from the brim of his hat on to his shoulders: his boots were muddy to the knees, his clothes wringing wet. His eyes were wild and hazy and there was a curious tremor round his mouth. + 

The lackey declared with a knowing wink afterwards that his lordship must ’ave been drinkin’! + 

But at the moment his sense of duty urged him to show my lord⁠—who was his master’s friend⁠—into the library, whatever condition he was in. He took his dripping coat and hat from him and marshalled him across the large, square hall. + 

Sir Percy Blakeney was sitting at his desk, writing, when Lord Tony was shown in. He looked up and at once rose and went to his friend. + 

“Sit down, Tony,” he said quietly, “while I get you some brandy.” + 

He forced the young man down gently into a chair in front of the fire and threw another log into the blaze. Then from a cupboard he fetched a flask of brandy and a glass, poured some out and held it to Tony’s lips. The latter drank⁠—unresisting⁠—like a child. Then as some warmth penetrated into his bones, he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. Blakeney waited quietly, sitting down opposite to him, until his friend should be able to speak. + 

“And after all that you told me on Monday night!” were the first words which came from Tony’s quivering lips, “and the letter you sent me over on Tuesday! Oh! I was prepared to mistrust Martin-Roget. Why! I never allowed her out of my sight!⁠ ⁠… But her father!⁠ ⁠… How could I guess?” + 

“Can you tell me exactly what happened?” + 

Lord Tony drew himself up, and staring vacantly into the fire told his friend the events of the past four days. On Wednesday the courier with M. de Kernogan’s letter, breathing kindness and forgiveness. On Thursday his arrival and seeming ill-health, on Friday his departure with Yvonne. Tony spoke quite calmly. He had never been anything but calm since first, in the house in Laura Place, he had received that awful blow. + 

“I ought to have known,” he concluded dully, “I ought to have guessed. Especially since you warned me.” + 

“I warned you that Martin-Roget was not the man he pretended to be,” said Blakeney gently, “I warned you against him. But I too failed to suspect the duc de Kernogan. We are Britishers, you and I, my dear Tony,” he added with a quaint little laugh, “our minds will never be quite equal to the tortuous ways of these Latin races. But we are not going to waste time now talking about the past. We have got to find your wife before those brutes have time to wreak their devilries against her.” + 

“On the high seas⁠ ⁠… on the way to Holland⁠ ⁠… thence to Coblentz⁠ ⁠…” murmured Tony, “I have not yet shown you the duc’s letter to me.” + 

He drew from his pocket the crumpled, damp piece of paper on which the ink had run into patches and blotches, and which had become almost undecipherable now. Sir Percy took it from him and read it through: + 

“The duc de Kernogan and Lady Anthony Dewhurst are not on their way to Holland and to Coblentz,” he said quietly as he handed the letter back to Lord Tony. + 

“Not on their way to Holland?” queried the young man with a puzzled frown. “What do you mean?” + 

Blakeney drew his chair closer to his friend: a marvellous and subtle change had suddenly taken place in his individuality. Only a few moments ago he was the polished, elegant man of the world, then the kindly and understanding friend⁠—self-contained, reserved, with a perfect manner redolent of sympathy and dignity. Suddenly all that was changed. His manner was still perfect and outwardly calm, his gestures scarce, his speech deliberate, but the compelling power of the leader⁠—which is the birthright of such men⁠—glowed and sparkled now in his deep-set eyes: the spirit of adventure and reckless daring was awake⁠—insistent and rampant⁠—and subtle effluvia of enthusiasm and audacity emanated from his entire personality. + 

Sir Percy Blakeney had sunk his individuality in that of the Scarlet Pimpernel. + 

“I mean,” he said, returning his friend’s anxious look with one that was inspiring in its unshakable confidence, “I mean that on Monday last, the night before your wedding⁠—when I urged you to obtain Yvonne de Kernogan’s consent to an immediate marriage⁠—I had followed Martin-Roget to a place called The Bottom Inn on Goblin Combe⁠—a place well known to every smuggler in the county.” + 

“You, Percy!” exclaimed Tony in amazement. + 

“Yes, I,” laughed the other lightly. “Why not? I had had my suspicions of him for some time. As luck would have it he started off on the Monday afternoon by hired coach to Chelwood. I followed. From Chelwood he wanted to go on to Redhill: but the roads were axle deep in mud, and evening was gathering in very fast. Nobody would take him. He wanted a horse and a guide. I was on the spot⁠—as disreputable a bar-loafer as you ever saw in your life. I offered to take him. He had no choice. He had to take me. No one else had offered. I took him to the Bottom Inn. There he met our esteemed friend M. Chauvelin.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Chauvelin!” cried Tony, suddenly roused from the dull apathy of his immeasurable grief, at sound of that name which recalled so many exciting adventures, such mad, wild, hair-breadth escapes. “Chauvelin! What in the world is he doing here in England?” + 

“Brewing mischief, of course,” replied Blakeney dryly. “In disgrace, discredited, a marked man⁠—what you will⁠—my friend M. Chauvelin has still an infinite capacity for mischief. Through the interstices of a badly fastened shutter I heard two blackguards devising infinite devilry. That is why, Tony,” he added, “I urged an immediate marriage as the only real protection for Yvonne de Kernogan against those blackguards.” + 

“Would to God you had been more explicit!” exclaimed Tony with a bitter sigh. + 

“Would to God I had,” rejoined the other, “but there was so little time, with licences and whatnot all to arrange for, and less than an hour to do it in. And would you have suspected the Duc himself of such execrable duplicity even if you had known, as I did then, that the so-called Martin-Roget hath name Adet, and that he matures thoughts of deadly revenge against the duc de Kernogan and his daughter?” + 

“Martin-Roget? the banker⁠—the exiled royalist who.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“He may be a banker now⁠ ⁠… but he certainly is no royalist⁠—he is the son of a peasant who was unjustly put to death four years ago by the duc de Kernogan.” + 

“Ye gods!” + 

“He came over to England plentifully supplied with money⁠—I could not gather if the money is his or if it has been entrusted to him by the revolutionary government for purposes of spying and corruption⁠—but he came to England in order to ingratiate himself with the duc de Kernogan and his daughter, and then to lure them back to France, for what purpose you may well imagine.” + 

“Good God, man⁠ ⁠… you can’t mean⁠ ⁠… ?” + 

“He has chartered a smuggler’s craft⁠—or rather Chauvelin has done it for him. Her name is the Hollandia, her master hath name Kuyper. She was to be in Portishead harbour on the last day of November: all her papers in order. Cargo of West India sugar, destination Amsterdam, consignee some Mynheer over there. But Martin-Roget, or whatever his name may be, and no doubt our friend Chauvelin too, were to be aboard her, and also M. le duc de Kernogan and his daughter. And the Hollandia is to put into Le Croisic for Nantes, whose revolutionary proconsul, that infamous Carrier, is of course Chauvelin’s bosom friend.” + 

Sir Percy Blakeney finished speaking. Lord Tony had listened to him quietly and in silence: now he rose and turned resolutely to his friend. There was no longer any trace in him of that stunned apathy which had been the primary result of the terrible blow. His young face was still almost unrecognisable from the lines of grief and horror which marred its habitual fresh, boyish look. He looked twenty years older than he had done a few hours ago, but there was also in his whole attitude now the virility of more mature manhood, its determination and unswerving purpose. + 

“And what can I do now?” he asked simply, knowing that he could trust his friend and leader with what he held dearest in all the world. “Without you, Blakeney, I am of course impotent and lost. I haven’t the head to think. I haven’t sufficient brains to pit against those cunning devils. But if you will help me.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Then he checked himself abruptly, and the look of hopeless despair once more crept into his eyes. + 

“I am mad, Percy,” he said with a self-deprecating shrug of the shoulders, “gone crazy with grief, I suppose, or I shouldn’t talk of asking your help, of risking your life in my cause.” + 

“Tony, if you talk that rubbish, I shall be forced to punch your head,” retorted Blakeney with his light laugh. “Why man,” he added gaily, “can’t you see that I am aching to have at my old friend Chauvelin again?” + 

And indeed the zest of adventure, the zest to fight, never dormant, was glowing with compelling vigour now in those lazy eyes of his which were resting with such kindliness upon his stricken friend. “Go home, Tony!” he added, “go, you rascal, and collect what things you want, while I send for Hastings and Ffoulkes, and see that four good horses are ready for us within the hour. Tonight we sleep at Portishead, Tony. The Daydream is lying off there, ready to sail at any hour of the day or night. The Hollandia has twenty-four hours’ start of us, alas! and we cannot overtake her now: but we’ll be in Nantes ere those devils can do much mischief: and once in Nantes!⁠ ⁠… Why, Tony man! think of the glorious escapes we’ve had together, you and I! Think of the gay, mad rides across the north of France, with half-fainting women and swooning children across our saddlebows! Think of the day when we smuggled the de Tournais out of Calais harbour, the day we snatched Juliette Déroulède and her Paul out of the tumbril and tore across Paris with that howling mob at our heels! Think! think, Tony! of all the happiest, merriest moments of your life and they will seem dull and lifeless beside what is in store for you, when with your dear wife’s arms clinging round your neck, we’ll fly along the quays of Nantes on the road to liberty! Ah, Tony lad! were it not for the anxiety which I know is gnawing at your heart, I would count this one of the happiest hours of my happy life!” + 

He was so full of enthusiasm, so full of vitality, that life itself seemed to emanate from him and to communicate itself to the very atmosphere around. Hope lit up my lord Tony’s wan face: he believed in his friend as medieval ascetics believed in the saints whom they adored. Enthusiasm had crept into his veins, dull despair fell away from him like a mantle. + 

“God bless you, Percy,” he exclaimed as his firm and loyal hand grasped that of the leader whom he revered. + 

“Nay!” retorted Blakeney with sudden gravity. “He hath done that already. Pray for His help today, lad, as you have never prayed before.” + 

VII + 

Marguerite + 

I + 

Lord Tony had gone, and for the space of five minutes Sir Percy Blakeney stood in front of the hearth staring into the fire. Something lay before him, something had to be done now, which represented the heavy price that had to be paid for those mad and happy adventures, for that reckless daring, aye for that selfless supreme sacrifice which was as the very breath of life to the Scarlet Pimpernel. + 

And in the dancing flames he could see Marguerite’s blue eyes, her ardent hair, her tender smile all pleading with him not to go. She had so much to give him⁠—so much happiness, such an infinity of love, and he was all that she had in the world! It seemed to him as if he could feel her arms around him even now, as if he could hear her voice whispering appealingly: “Do not go! Am I nothing to you that thoughts of others should triumph over my pleading? that the need of others should outweigh mine own most pressing need? I want you, Percy! aye! even I! You have done so much for others⁠—it is my turn now.” + 

But even as in a kind of trance those words seemed to reach his strained senses, he knew that he must go, that he must tear himself away once more from the clinging embrace of her dear arms and shut his eyes to the tears which anon would fill her own. Destiny demanded that he should go. He had chosen his path in life himself, at first only in a spirit of wild recklessness, a mad tossing of his life into the scales of Fate. But now that same destiny which he had chosen had become his master: he no longer could draw back. What he had done once, twenty times, an hundred times, that he must do again, all the while that the weak and the defenceless called mutely to him from across the seas, all the while that innocent women suffered and orphaned children cried. + 

And today it was his friend, his comrade, who had come to him in his distress: the young wife whom he idolised was in the most dire peril that could possibly threaten any woman: she was at the mercy of a man who, driven by the passion of revenge, meant to show her no mercy, and the devil alone knew these days to what lengths of infamy a man so driven would go. + 

The minutes sped on. Blakeney’s eyes grew hot and wearied from staring into the fire. He closed them for a moment and then quietly turned to go. + 

II + 

All those who knew Marguerite Blakeney these days marvelled if she was ever unhappy. Lady Ffoulkes, who was her most trusted friend, vowed that she was not. She had moments⁠—days⁠—sometimes weeks of intense anxiety, which amounted to acute agony. Whenever she saw her husband start on one of those expeditions to France wherein every minute, every hour, he risked his life and more in order to snatch yet another threatened victim from the awful clutches of those merciless Terrorists, she endured soul-torture such as few women could have withstood who had not her splendid courage and her boundless faith. But against such crushing sorrow she had to set off the happiness of those reunions with the man whom she loved so passionately⁠—happiness which was so great, that it overrode and conquered the very memory of past anxieties. + 

Marguerite Blakeney suffered terribly at times⁠—at others she was overwhelmingly happy⁠—the measure of her life was made up of the bitter dregs of sorrow and the sparkling wine of joy! No! she was not altogether unhappy: and gradually that enthusiasm which irradiated from the whole personality of the valiant Scarlet Pimpernel, which dominated his every action, entered into Marguerite Blakeney’s blood too. His vitality was so compelling, those impulses which carried him headlong into unknown dangers were so generous and were actuated by such pure selflessness, that the noble-hearted woman whose very soul was wrapped up in the idolised husband, allowed herself to ride by his side on the buoyant waves of his enthusiasm and of his desires: she smothered every expression of anxiety, she swallowed her tears, she learned to say the word “Goodbye” and forgot the word “Stay!” + 

III + 

It was half an hour after midday when Percy knocked at the door of her boudoir. She had just come in from a walk in the meadows round the town and along the bank of the river: the rain had overtaken her and she had come in very wet, but none the less exhilarated by the movement and the keen, damp, salt-laden air which came straight over the hills from the Channel. She had taken off her hat and her mantle and was laughing gaily with her maid who was shaking the wet out of a feather. She looked round at her husband when he entered, and with a quick gesture ordered the maid out of the room. + 

She had learned to read every line on Percy’s face, every expression of his lazy, heavy-lidded eyes. She saw that he was dressed with more than his usual fastidiousness, but in dark clothes and travelling mantle. She knew, moreover, by that subtle instinct which had become a second nature and which warned her whenever he meant to go. + 

Nor did he announce his departure to her in so many words. As soon as the maid had gone, he took his beloved in his arms. + 

“They have stolen Tony’s wife from him,” he said with that light, quaint laugh of his. “I told you that the man Martin-Roget had planned some devilish mischief⁠—well! he has succeeded so far, thanks to that unspeakable fool the duc de Kernogan.” + 

He told her briefly the history of the past few days. + 

“Tony did not take my warning seriously enough,” he concluded with a sigh; “he ought never to have allowed his wife out of his sight.” + 

Marguerite had not interrupted him while he spoke. At first she just lay in his arms, quiescent and listening, nerving herself by a supreme effort not to utter one sigh of misery or one word of appeal. Then, as her knees shook under her, she sank back into a chair by the hearth and he knelt beside her with his arms clasped tightly round her shoulders, his cheek pressed against hers. He had no need to tell her that duty and friendship called, that the call of honour was once again⁠—as it so often has been in the world⁠—louder than that of love. + 

She understood and she knew, and he, with that supersensitive instinct of his, understood the heroic effort which she made. + 

“Your love, dear heart,” he whispered, “will draw me back safely home as it hath so often done before. You believe that, do you not?” + 

And she had the supreme courage to murmur: “Yes!” + 

VIII + 

The Road to Portishead + 

I + 

It was not until Bath had very obviously been left behind that Yvonne de Kernogan⁠—Lady Anthony Dewhurst⁠—realised that she had been trapped. + 

During the first half-hour of the journey her father had lain back against the cushions of the carriage with eyes closed, his face pale and wan as if with great suffering. Yvonne, her mind a prey to the gravest anxiety, sat beside him, holding his limp cold hand in hers. Once or twice she ventured on a timid question as to his health and he invariably murmured a feeble assurance that he felt well, only very tired and disinclined to talk. Anon she suggested⁠—diffidently, for she did not mean to disturb him⁠—that the driver did not appear to know his way into Bath, he had turned into a side road which she felt sure was not the right one. M. le duc then roused himself for a moment from his lethargy. He leaned forward and gazed out of the window. + 

“The man is quite right, Yvonne,” he said quietly, “he knows his way. He brought me along this road yesterday. He gets into Bath by a slight detour but it is pleasanter driving.” + 

This reply satisfied her. She was a stranger in the land, and knew little or nothing of the environs of Bath. True, last Monday morning after the ceremony of her marriage she had driven out to Combwich, but dawn was only just breaking then, and she had lain for the most part⁠—wearied and happy⁠—in her young husband’s arms. She had taken scant note of roads and signposts. + 

A few minutes later the coach came to a halt and Yvonne, looking through the window, saw a man who was muffled up to the chin and enveloped in a huge travelling cape, mount swiftly up beside the driver. + 

“Who is that man?” she queried sharply. + 

“Some friend of the coachman’s, no doubt,” murmured her father in reply, “to whom he is giving a lift as far as Bath.” + 

The barouche had moved on again. + 

Yvonne could not have told you why, but at her father’s last words she had felt a sudden cold grip at her heart⁠—the first since she started. It was neither fear nor yet suspicion, but a chill seemed to go right through her. She gazed anxiously through the window, and then looked at her father with eyes that challenged and that doubted. But M. le duc would not meet her gaze. He had once more closed his eyes and sat quite still, pale and haggard, like a man who is suffering acutely. + 

II + 

“Father we are going back to Bath, are we not?” + 

The query came out trenchant and hard from her throat which now felt hoarse and choked. Her whole being was suddenly pervaded by a vast and nameless fear. Time had gone on, and there was no sign in the distance of the great city. M. de Kernogan made no reply, but he opened his eyes and a curious glance shot from them at the terror-stricken face of his daughter. + 

Then she knew⁠—knew that she had been tricked and trapped⁠—that her father had played a hideous and complicated role of hypocrisy and duplicity in order to take her away from the husband whom she idolised. + 

Fear and her love for the man of her choice gave her initiative and strength. Before M. de Kernogan could realise what she was doing, before he could make a movement to stop her, she had seized the handle of the carriage door, wrenched the door open and jumped out into the road. She fell on her face in the mud, but the next moment she picked herself up again and started to run⁠—down the road which the carriage had just traversed, on and on as fast as she could go. She ran on blindly, unreasoningly, impelled by a purely physical instinct to escape, not thinking how childish, how futile such an attempt was bound to be. + 

Already after the first few minutes of this swift career over the muddy road, she heard quick, heavy footsteps behind her. Her father could not run like that⁠—the coachman could not have thus left his horses⁠—but still she could hear those footsteps at a run⁠—a quicker run than hers⁠—and they were gaining on her⁠—every minute, every second. The next, she felt two powerful arms suddenly seizing her by the shoulders. She stumbled and would once more have fallen, but for those same strong arms which held her close. + 

“Let me go! Let me go!” she cried, panting. + 

But she was held and could no longer move. She looked up into the face of Martin-Roget, who without any hesitation or compunction lifted her up as if she had been a bale of light goods and carried her back toward the coach. She had forgotten the man who had been picked up on the road awhile ago, and had been sitting beside the coachman since. + 

He deposited her in the barouche beside her father, then quietly closed the door and once more mounted to his seat on the box. The carriage moved on again. M. de Kernogan was no longer lethargic, he looked down on his daughter’s inert form beside him, and not one look of tenderness or compassion softened the hard callousness of his face. + 

“Any resistance, my child,” he said coldly, “will as you see be useless as well as undignified. I deplore this necessary violence, but I should be forced once more to requisition M. Martin-Roget’s help if you attempted such foolish tricks again. When you are a little more calm, we will talk openly together.” + 

For the moment she was lying back against the cushions of the carriage; her nerves having momentarily given way before this appalling catastrophe which had overtaken her and the hideous outrage to which she was being subjected by her own father. She was sobbing convulsively. But in the face of his abominable callousness, she made a great effort to regain her self-control. Her pride, her dignity came to the rescue. She had had time in those few seconds to realise that she was indeed more helpless than any bird in a fowler’s net, and that only absolute calm and presence of mind could possibly save her now. + 

If indeed there was the slightest hope of salvation. + 

She drew herself up and resolutely dried her eyes and readjusted her hair and her hood and mantle. + 

“We can talk openly at once, sir,” she said coldly. “I am ready to hear what explanation you can offer for this monstrous outrage.” + 

“I owe you no explanation, my child,” he retorted calmly. “Presently when you are restored to your own sense of dignity and of self-respect you will remember that a lady of the house of Kernogan does not elope in the night with a stranger and a heretic like some kitchen-wench. Having so far forgotten herself my daughter must, alas! take the consequences, which I deplore, of her own sins and lack of honour.” + 

“And no doubt, father,” she retorted, stung to the quick by his insults, “that you too will anon be restored to your own sense of self-respect and remember that hitherto no gentleman of the house of Kernogan has acted the part of a liar and of a hypocrite!” + 

“Silence!” he commanded sternly. + 

“Yes!” she reiterated wildly, “it was the role of a liar and of a hypocrite that you played from the moment when you sat down to pen that letter full of protestations of affection and forgiveness, until like a veritable Judas you betrayed your own daughter with a kiss. Shame on you, father!” she cried. “Shame!” + 

“Enough!” he said, as he seized her wrist so roughly that the cry of pain which involuntarily escaped her effectually checked the words in her mouth. “You are mad, beside yourself, a thoughtless, senseless creature whom I shall have to coerce more effectually if you do not cease your ravings. Do not force me to have recourse once again to M. Martin-Roget’s assistance to keep your undignified outburst in check.” + 

The name of the man whom she had learned to hate and fear more than any other human being in the world was sufficient to restore to her that measure of self-control which had again threatened to leave her. + 

“Enough indeed,” she said more calmly; “the brain that could devise and carry out such infamy in cold blood is not like to be influenced by a defenceless woman’s tears. Will you at least tell me whither you are taking me?” + 

“We go to a place on the coast now,” he replied coldly, “the outlandish name of which has escaped me. There we embark for Holland, from whence we shall join their Royal Highnesses at Coblentz. It is at Coblentz that your marriage with M. Martin-Roget will take place, and.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Stay, father,” she broke in, speaking quite as calmly as he did, “ere you go any further. Understand me clearly, for I mean every word that I say. In the sight of God⁠—if not in that of the laws of France⁠—I am the wife of Lord Anthony Dewhurst. By everything that I hold most sacred and most dear I swear to you that I will never become Martin-Roget’s wife. I would die first,” she added with burning but resolutely suppressed passion. + 

He shrugged his shoulders. + 

“Pshaw, my child,” he said quietly, “many a time since the world began have women registered such solemn and sacred vows, only to break them when force of circumstance and their own good sense made them ashamed of their own folly.” + 

“How little you know me, father,” was all that she said in reply. + 

III + 

Indeed, Yvonne de Kernogan⁠—Yvonne Dewhurst as she was now in sight of God and men⁠—had far too much innate dignity and self-respect to continue this discussion, seeing that in any case she was physically the weaker, and that she was absolutely helpless and defenceless in the hands of two men, one of whom⁠—her own father⁠—who should have been her protector, was leagued with her bitterest enemy against her. + 

That Martin-Roget was her enemy⁠—aye and her father’s too⁠—she had absolutely no doubt. Some obscure yet keen instinct was working in her heart, urging her to mistrust him even more wholly than she had done before. Just now, when he laid ruthless hands on her and carried her, inert and half-swooning, back into the coach, and she lay with closed eyes, her very soul in revolt against this contact with him, against the feel of his arms around her, a vague memory surcharged with horror and with dread stirred within her brain: and over the vista of the past few years she looked back upon an evening in the autumn⁠—a rough night with the wind from the Atlantic blowing across the lowlands of Poitou and soughing in the willow trees that bordered the Loire⁠—she seemed to hear the tumultuous cries of enraged human creatures dominating the sound of the gale, she felt the crowd of evil-intentioned men around the closed carriage wherein she sat, calm and unafraid. Darkness then was all around her. She could not see. She could only hear and feel. And she heard the carriage door being wrenched open, and she felt the cold breath of the wind upon her cheek, and also the hot breath of a man in a passion of fury and of hate. + 

She had seen nothing then, and mercifully semi-unconsciousness had dulled her aching senses, but even now her soul shrunk with horror at the vague remembrance of that ghostlike form⁠—the spirit of hate and of revenge⁠—of its rough arms encircling her shoulders, its fingers under her chin⁠—and then that awful, loathsome, contaminating kiss which she thought then would have smirched her forever. It had taken all the pure, sweet kisses of a brave and loyal man whom she loved and revered, to make her forget that hideous, indelible stain: and in the arms of her dear milor she had forgotten that one terrible moment, when she had felt that the embrace of death must be more endurable than that of this unknown and hated man. + 

It was the memory of that awful night which had come back to her as in a flash while she lay passive and broken in Martin-Roget’s arms. Of course for the moment she had no thought of connecting the rich banker from Brest, the enthusiastic royalist and émigré, with one of those turbulent, uneducated peasant lads who had attacked her carriage that night: all that she was conscious of was that she was outraged by his presence, just as she had been outraged then, and that the contact of his hands, of his arms, was absolutely unendurable. + 

To fight against the physical power which held her a helpless prisoner in the hands of the enemy was sheer impossibility. She knew that, and was too proud to make feeble and futile efforts which could only end in defeat and further humiliation. She felt hideously wretched and lonely⁠—thoughts of her husband, who at this hour was still serenely unconscious of the terrible catastrophe which had befallen him, brought tears of acute misery to her eyes. What would he do when⁠—tomorrow, perhaps⁠—he realised that his bride had been stolen from him, that he had been fooled and duped as she had been too. What could he do when he knew? + 

She tried to solace her own soul-agony by thinking of his influential friends who, of course, would help him as soon as they knew. There was that mysterious and potent friend of whom he spoke so little, who already had warned him of coming danger and urged on the secret marriage which should have proved a protection. There was Sir Percy Blakeney, of whom he spoke much, who was enormously rich, independent, the most intimate friend of the Regent himself. There was.⁠ ⁠… + 

But what was the use of clinging even for one instant to those feeble cords of Hope’s broken lyre? By the time her dear lord knew that she was gone, she would be on the high seas, far out of his reach. + 

And she had not even the solace of tears⁠—heartbroken sobs rose in her throat, but she resolutely kept them back. Her father’s cold, impassive face, the callous glitter in his eyes told her that every tear would be in vain, her most earnest appeal an object for his sneers. + 

IV + 

As to how long the journey in the coach lasted after that Yvonne Dewhurst could not have said. It may have been a few hours, it may have been a cycle of years. She had been young⁠—a happy bride, a dutiful daughter⁠—when she left Combwich Hall. She was an old woman now, a supremely unhappy one, parted from the man she loved without hope of ever seeing him again in life, and feeling nothing but hatred and contempt for the father who had planned such infamy against her. + 

She offered no resistance whatever to any of her father’s commands. After the first outburst of revolt and indignation she had not even spoken to him. + 

There was a halt somewhere on the way, when in the low-raftered room of a posting-inn, she had to sit at table with the two men who had compassed her misery. She was thirsty, feverish and weak: she drank some milk in silence. She felt ill physically as well as mentally, and the constant effort not to break down had helped to shatter her nerves. As she had stepped out of the barouche without a word, so she stepped into it again when it stood outside, ready with a fresh relay of horses to take her further, still further, away from the cosy little nest where even now her young husband was waiting longingly for her return. The people of the inn⁠—a kindly-looking woman, a portly middle-aged man, one or two young ostlers and serving-maids were standing about in the yard when her father led her to the coach. For a moment the wild idea rushed to her mind to run to these people and demand their protection, to proclaim at the top of her voice the infamous act which was dragging her away from her husband and her home, and lead her a helpless prisoner to a fate that was infinitely worse than death. She even ran to the woman who looked so benevolent and so kind, she placed her small quivering hand on the other’s rough toil-worn one and in hurried, appealing words begged for her help and the shelter of a home till she could communicate with her husband. + 

The woman listened with a look of kindly pity upon her homely face, she patted the small, trembling hand and stroked it gently, tears of compassion gathered in her eyes: + 

“Yes, yes, my dear,” she said soothingly, speaking as she would to a sick woman or to a child, “I quite understand. I wouldna’ fret if I was you. I would jess go quietly with your pore father: ’e knows what’s best for you, that ’e do. You come ’long wi’ me,” she added as she drew Yvonne’s hands through her arm, “I’ll see ye’re comfortable in the coach.” + 

Yvonne, bewildered, could not at first understand either the woman’s sympathy or her obvious indifference to the pitiable tale, until⁠—Oh! the shame of it!⁠—she saw the two young serving-maids looking on her with equal pity expressed in their round eyes, and heard one of them whispering to the other: + 

“Pore lady! so zad ain’t it? I’m that zorry for the pore father!” + 

And the girl with a significant gesture indicated her own forehead and glanced knowingly at her companion. Yvonne felt a hot flush rise to the very roots of her hair. So her father and Martin-Roget had thought of everything, and had taken every precaution to cut the ground from under her feet. Wherever a halt was necessary, wherever the party might come in contact with the curious or the indifferent, it would be given out that the poor young lady was crazed, that she talked wildly, and had to be kept under restraint. + 

Yvonne as she turned away from that last faint glimmer of hope, encountered Martin-Roget’s glance of triumph and saw the sneer which curled his full lips. Her father came up to her just then and took her over from the kindly hostess, with the ostentatious manner of one who has charge of a sick person, and must take every precaution for her welfare. + 

“Another loss of dignity, my child,” he said to her in French, so that none but Martin-Roget could catch what he said. “I guessed that you would commit some indiscretion, you see, so M. Martin-Roget and myself warned all the people at the inn the moment we arrived. We told them that I was travelling with a sick daughter who had become crazed through the death of her lover, and believed herself⁠—like most crazed persons do⁠—to be persecuted and oppressed. You have seen the result. They pitied you. Even the serving-maids smiled. It would have been wiser to remain silent.” + 

Whereupon he handed her into the barouche with loving care, a crowd of sympathetic onlookers gazing with obvious compassion on the poor crazed lady and her sorely tried father. + 

After this episode Yvonne gave up the struggle. + 

No one but God could help her, if He chose to perform a miracle. + 

V + 

The rest of the journey was accomplished in silence. Yvonne gazed, unseeing, through the carriage window as the barouche rattled on the cobblestones of the streets of Bristol. She marvelled at the number of people who went gaily by along the streets, unheeding, unknowing that the greatest depths of misery to which any human being could sink had been probed by the unfortunate young girl who wide-eyed, mute and brokenhearted gazed out upon the busy world without. + 

Portishead was reached just when the grey light of day turned to a gloomy twilight. Yvonne unresisting, insentient, went whither she was bidden to go. Better that, than to feel Martin-Roget’s coercive grip on her arm, or to hear her father’s curt words of command. + 

She walked along the pier and anon stepped into a boat, hardly knowing what she was doing: the twilight was welcome to her, for it hid much from her view and her eyes⁠—hot with unshed tears⁠—ached for the restful gloom. She realised that the boat was being rowed along for some little way down the stream, that Frédérick, who had come she knew not how or whence, was in the boat too with some luggage which she recognised as being familiar: that another woman was there whom she did not know, but who appeared to look after her comforts, wrapped a shawl closer round her knees and drew the hood of her mantle closer round her neck. But it was all like an ugly dream: the voices of her father and of Martin-Roget, who were talking in monosyllables, the sound of the oars as they struck the water, or creaked in their rowlocks, came to her as from an ever-receding distance. + 

A couple of hours later she came back to complete consciousness. She was in a narrow place, which at first appeared to her like a cupboard: the atmosphere was both cold and stuffy and reeked of tar and of oil. She was lying on a hard bed with her mantle and a shawl wrapped round her. It was very dark save where the feeble glimmer of a lamp threw a circle of light around. Above her head there was a constant and heavy tramping of feet, and the sound of incessant and varied creakings and groanings of wood, cordage and metal filled the night air with their weird and dismal sounds. A slow feeling of movement coupled with a gentle oscillation confirmed the unfortunate girl’s first waking impression that she was on board a ship. How she had got there she did not know. She must ultimately have fainted in the small boat and been carried aboard. She raised herself slightly on her elbow and peered round her into the dark corners of the cabin: opposite to her upon a bench, also wrapped up in shawl and mantle, lay the woman who had been in attendance on her in the boat. + 

The woman’s heavy breathing indicated that she was fast asleep. + 

Loneliness! Misery! Desolation encompassed the happy bride of yesterday. With a moan of exquisite soul-agony she fell back against the hard cushions, and for the first time this day a convulsive flow of tears eased the super-acuteness of her misery. + 

IX + 

The Coast of France + 

I + 

The whole of that wretched mournful day Yvonne Dewhurst spent upon the deck of the ship which was bearing her away every hour, every minute, further and still further from home and happiness. She seldom spoke: she ate and drank when food was brought to her: she was conscious neither of cold nor of wet, of well-being or ill. She sat upon a pile of cordages in the stern of the ship leaning against the taffrail and in imagination seeing the coast of England fade into illimitable space. + 

Part of the time it rained, and then she sat huddled up in the shawls and tarpaulins which the woman placed about her: then, when the sun came out, she still sat huddled up, closing her eyes against the glare. + 

When daylight faded into dusk, and then twilight into night she gazed into nothingness as she had gazed on water and sky before, thinking, thinking, thinking! This could not be the end⁠—it could not. So much happiness, such pure love, such perfect companionship as she had had with the young husband whom she idolised could not all be wrenched from her like that, without previous foreboding and without some warning from Fate. This miserable, sordid, wretched journey to an unknown land could not be the epilogue to the exquisite romance which had suddenly changed the dreary monotony of her life into one long, glowing dream of joy and of happiness! This could not be the end! + 

And gazing into the immensity of the far horizon she thought and thought and racked her memory for every word, every look which she had had from her dear milor. And upon the grey background of sea and sky she seemed to perceive the vague and dim outline of that mysterious friend⁠—the man who knew everything⁠—who foresaw everything, even and above all the dangers that threatened those whom he loved. He had foreseen this awful danger too! Oh! if only milor and she herself had realised its full extent! But now surely! surely! he would help, he would know what to do. Milor was wont to speak of him as being omniscient and having marvellous powers. + 

Once or twice during the day M. le duc de Kernogan came to sit beside his daughter and tried to speak a few words of comfort and of sympathy. Of a truth⁠—here on the open sea⁠—far both from home and kindred and from the new friends he had found in hospitable England⁠—his heart smote him for all the wrong he had done to his only child. He dared not think of the gentle and patient wife who lay at rest in the churchyard of Kernogan, for he feared that with his thoughts he would conjure up her pale, avenging ghost who would demand an account of what he had done with her child. + 

Cold and exposure⁠—the discomfort of the long sea-journey in this rough trading ship had somewhat damped M. de Kernogan’s pride and obstinacy: his loyalty to the cause of his King had paled before the demands of a father’s duty toward his helpless daughter. + 

II + 

It was close on six o’clock and the night, after the turbulent and capricious alternations of rain and sunshine, promised to be beautifully clear, though very cold. The pale crescent of the moon had just emerged from behind the thick veil of cloud and mist which still hung threateningly upon the horizon: a fitful sheen of silver danced upon the waves. + 

M. le duc stood beside his daughter. He had inquired after her health and well-being and received her monosyllabic reply with an impatient sigh. M. Martin-Roget was pacing up and down the deck with restless and vigorous strides: he had just gone by and made a loud and cheery comment on the weather and the beauty of the night. + 

Could Yvonne Dewhurst have seen her father’s face now, or had she cared to study it, she would have perceived that he was gazing out to sea in the direction to which the schooner was heading with an intent look of puzzlement, and that there was a deep furrow between his brows. Half an hour went by and he still stood there, silent and absorbed: then suddenly a curious exclamation escaped his lips: he stooped and seized his daughter by the wrist. + 

“Yvonne!” he said excitedly, “tell me! am I dreaming, or am I crazed?” + 

“What is it?” she asked coldly. + 

“Out there! Look! Just tell me what you see?” + 

He appeared so excited and his pressure on her wrist was so insistent that she dragged herself to her feet and looked out to sea in the direction to which he was pointing. + 

“Tell me what you see,” he reiterated with ever-growing excitement, and she felt that the hand which held her wrist trembled violently. + 

“The light from a lighthouse, I think,” she said. + 

“And besides that?” + 

“Another light⁠—a much smaller one⁠—considerably higher up. It must be perched up on some cliffs.” + 

“Anything else?” + 

“Yes. There are lights dotted about here and there. Some village on the coast.” + 

“On the coast?” he murmured hoarsely, “and we are heading towards it.” + 

“So it appears,” she said indifferently. What cared she to what shore she was being taken: every land save England was exile to her now. + 

Just at this moment M. Martin-Roget in his restless wanderings once more passed by. + 

“M. Martin-Roget!” called the duc. + 

And vaguely Yvonne wondered why his voice trembled so. + 

“At your service, M. le duc,” replied the other as he came to a halt, and then stood with legs wide apart firmly planted upon the deck, his hands buried in the pockets of his heavy mantle, his head thrown back, as if defiantly, his whole attitude that of a master condescending to talk with slaves. + 

“What are those lights over there, ahead of us?” asked M. le duc quietly. + 

“The lighthouse of Le Croisic, M. le duc,” replied Martin-Roget dryly, “and of the guardhouse above and the harbour below. All at your service,” he added, with a sneer. + 

“Monsieur.⁠ ⁠…” exclaimed the duc. + 

“Eh? what?” queried the other blandly. + 

“What does this mean?” + 

In the vague, dim light of the moon Yvonne could just distinguish the two men as they stood confronting one another. Martin-Roget, tall, massive, with arms now folded across his breast, shrugging his broad shoulders at the duc’s impassioned query⁠—and her father who suddenly appeared to have shrunk within himself, who raised one trembling hand to his forehead and with the other sought with pathetic entreaty the support of his daughter’s arm. + 

“What does this mean?” he murmured again. + 

“Only,” replied Martin-Roget with a laugh, “that we are close to the coast of France and that with this unpleasant but useful northwesterly wind we shall be in Nantes two hours before midnight.” + 

“In Nantes?” queried the duc vaguely, not understanding, speaking tonelessly like a somnambulist or a man in a trance. He was leaning heavily now on his daughter’s arm, and she with that motherly instinct which is ever present in a good woman’s heart even in the presence of her most cruel enemy, drew him tenderly towards her, gave him the support he needed, not quite understanding herself yet what it was that had befallen them both. + 

“Yes, in Nantes, M. le duc,” reiterated Martin-Roget with a sneer. + 

“But ’twas to Holland we were going.” + 

“To Nantes, M. le duc,” retorted the other with a ringing note of triumph in his voice, “to Nantes, from which you fled like a coward when you realised that the vengeance of an outraged people had at last overtaken you and your kind.” + 

“I do not understand,” stammered the duc, and mechanically now⁠—instinctively⁠—father and daughter clung to one another as if each was striving to protect the other from the raving fury of this madman. Never for a moment did they believe that he was sane. Excitement, they thought, had turned his brain: he was acting and speaking like one possessed. + 

“I dare say it would take far longer than the next four hours while we glide gently along the Loire, to make such as you understand that your arrogance and your pride are destined to be humbled at last and that you are now in the power of those men who awhile ago you did not deem worthy to lick your boots. I dare say,” he continued calmly, “you think that I am crazed. Well! perhaps I am, but sane enough anyhow, M. le duc, to enjoy the full flavour of revenge.” + 

“Revenge?⁠ ⁠… what have we done?⁠ ⁠… what has my daughter done?⁠ ⁠…” stammered the duc incoherently. “You swore you loved her⁠ ⁠… desired to make her your wife⁠ ⁠… I consented⁠ ⁠… she⁠ ⁠…” + 

Martin-Roget’s harsh laugh broke in on his vague murmurings. + 

“And like an arrogant fool you fell into the trap,” he said with calm irony, “and you were too blind to see in Martin-Roget, suitor for your daughter’s hand, Pierre Adet, the son of the victim of your execrable tyranny, the innocent man murdered at your bidding.” + 

“Pierre Adet⁠ ⁠… I don’t understand.” + 

“ ’Tis but little meseems that you do understand, M. le duc,” sneered the other. “But turn your memory back, I pray you, to the night four years ago when a few hotheaded peasant lads planned to give you a fright in your castle of Kernogan⁠ ⁠… the plan failed and Pierre Adet, the leader of that unfortunate band, managed to fly the country, whilst you, like a crazed and blind tyrant, administered punishment right and left for the fright which you had had. Just think of it! those boors! those louts! that swinish herd of human cattle had dared to raise a cry of revolt against you! To death with them all! to death! Where is Pierre Adet, the leader of those hogs? to him an exemplary punishment must be meted! a deterrent against any other attempt at revolt. Well, M. le duc, do you remember what happened then? Pierre Adet, severely injured in the melee, had managed to crawl away into safety. While he lay betwixt life and death, first in the presbytery of Vertou, then in various ditches on his way to Paris, he knew nothing of what happened at Nantes. When he returned to consciousness and to active life he heard that his father, Jean Adet the miller, who was innocent of any share in the revolt, had been hanged by order of M. le duc de Kernogan.” + 

He paused awhile and a curious laugh⁠—half-convulsive and not unmixed with sobs⁠—shook his broad shoulders. Neither the duc nor Yvonne made any comment on what they heard: the duc felt like a fly caught in a death-dealing web. He was dazed with the horror of his position, dazed above all with the rush of bitter remorse which had surged up in his heart and mind, when he realised that it was his own folly, his obstinacy⁠—aye! and his heartlessness which had brought this awful fate upon his daughter. And Yvonne felt that whatever she might endure of misery and hopelessness was nothing in comparison with what her father must feel with the addition of bitter self-reproach. + 

“Are you beginning to understand the position better now, M. le duc?” queried Martin-Roget after awhile. + 

The duc sank back nerveless upon the pile of cordages close by. Yvonne was leaning with her back against the taffrail, her two arms outstretched, the northwest wind blowing her soft brown hair about her face whilst her eyes sought through the gloom to read the lines of cruelty and hatred which must be distorting Martin-Roget’s face now. + 

“And,” she said quietly after awhile, “you have waited all these years, Monsieur, nursing thoughts of revenge and of hate against us. Ah! believe me,” she added earnestly, “though God knows my heart is full of misery at this moment, and though I know that at your bidding death will so soon claim me and my father as his own, yet would I not change my wretchedness for yours.” + 

“And I, citizeness,” he said roughly, addressing her for the first time in the manner prescribed by the revolutionary government, “would not change places with any king or other tyrant on earth. Yes,” he added as he came a step or two closer to her, “I have waited all these years. For four years I have thought and striven and planned, planned to be even with your father and with you one day. You had fled the country⁠—like cowards, bah!⁠—ready to lend your arms to the foreigner against your own country in order to reestablish a tyrant upon the throne whom the whole of the people of France loathed and detested. You had fled, but soon I learned whither you had gone. Then I set to work to gain access to you.⁠ ⁠… I learned English.⁠ ⁠… I too went to England⁠ ⁠… under an assumed name⁠ ⁠… with the necessary introductions so as to gain a footing in the circles in which you moved. I won your father’s condescension⁠—almost his friendship!⁠ ⁠… The rich banker from Brest should be fleeced in order to provide funds for the armies that were to devastate France⁠—and the rich banker of Brest refused to be fleeced unless he was lured by the promise of Mlle. de Kernogan’s hand in marriage.” + 

“You need not, Monsieur,” rejoined Yvonne coldly, while Martin-Roget paused in order to draw breath, “you need not, believe me, take the trouble to recount all the machinations which you carried through in order to gain your ends. Enough that my father was so foolish as to trust you, and that we are now completely in your power, but⁠ ⁠…” + 

“There is no ‘but,’ ” he broke in gruffly, “you are in my power and will be made to learn the law of the talion which demands an eye for an eye, a life for a life: that is the law which the people are applying to that herd of aristos who were arrogant tyrants once and are shrinking, cowering slaves now. Oh! you were very proud that night, Mademoiselle Yvonne de Kernogan, when a few peasant lads told you some home truths while you sat disdainful and callous in your carriage, but there is one fact that you can never efface from your memory, strive how you may, and that is that for a few minutes I held you in my arms and that I kissed you, my fine lady, aye! kissed you like I would any pert kitchen wench, even I, Pierre Adet, the miller’s son.” + 

He drew nearer and nearer to her as he spoke; she, leaning against the taffrail, could not retreat any further from him. He laughed. + 

“If you fall over into the water, I shall not complain,” he said, “it will save our proconsul the trouble, and the guillotine some work. But you need not fear. I am not trying to kiss you again. You are nothing to me, you and your father, less than nothing. Your death in misery and wretchedness is all I want, whether you find a dishonoured grave in the Loire or by suicide I care less than nothing. But let me tell you this,” he added, and his voice came now like a hissing sound through his set teeth, “that there is no intention on my part to make glorious martyrs of you both. I dare say you have heard some pretty stories over in England of aristos climbing the steps of the guillotine with an ecstatic look of martyrdom upon their face: and tales of the tumbrils of Paris laden with men and women going to their death and shouting ‘God save the King’ all the way. That is not the sort of paltry revenge which would satisfy me. My father was hanged by yours as a malefactor⁠—hanged, I say, like a common thief! he, a man who had never wronged a single soul in the whole course of his life, who had been an example of fine living, of hard work, of noble courage through many adversities. My mother was left a widow⁠—not the honoured widow of an honourable man⁠—but a pariah, the relict of a malefactor who had died of the hangman’s rope⁠—my sister was left an orphan⁠—dishonoured⁠—without hope of gaining the love of a respectable man. All that I and my family owe to ci-devant M. le duc de Kernogan, and therefore I tell you, that both he and his daughter shall not die like martyrs but like malefactors too⁠—shamed⁠—dishonoured⁠—loathed and execrated even by their own kindred! Take note of that, M. le duc de Kernogan! You have sown shame, shame shall you reap! and the name of which you are so proud will be dragged in the mire until it has become a byword in the land for all that is despicable and base.” + 

Perhaps at no time of his life had Martin-Roget, erstwhile Pierre Adet, spoken with such an intensity of passion, even though he was at all times turbulent and a ready prey to his own emotions. But all that he had kept hidden in the inmost recesses of his heart, ever since as a young stripling he had chafed at the social conditions of his country, now welled forth in that wild harangue. For the first time in his life he felt that he was really master of those who had once despised and oppressed him. He held them and was the arbiter of their fate. The sense of possession and of power had gone to his head like wine: he was intoxicated with his own feeling of triumphant revenge, and this impassioned rhetoric flowed from his mouth like the insentient babble of a drunken man. + 

The duc de Kernogan, sitting on the coil of cordages with his elbows on his knees and his head buried in his hands, had no thought of breaking in on the other man’s ravings. The bitterness of remorse paralysed his thinking faculties. Martin-Roget’s savage words struck upon his senses like blows from a sledgehammer. He knew that nothing but his own folly was the cause of Yvonne’s and his own misfortune. Yvonne had been safe from all evil fortune under the protection of her fine young English husband; he⁠—the father who should have been her chief protector⁠—had dragged her by brute force away from that husband’s care and had landed her⁠ ⁠… where?⁠ ⁠… A shudder like acute ague went through the unfortunate man’s whole body as he thought of the future. + 

Nor did Yvonne Dewhurst attempt to make reply to her enemy’s delirious talk. She would not give him even the paltry satisfaction of feeling that he had stung her into a retort. She did not fear him⁠—she hated him too much for that⁠—but like her father she had no illusions as to his power over them both. While he stormed and raved she kept her eyes steadily fixed upon him. She could only just barely distinguish him in the gloom, and he no doubt failed to see the expression of lofty indifference wherewith she contrived to regard him: but he felt her contempt, and but for the presence of the sailors on the deck he probably would have struck her. + 

As it was when, from sheer lack of breath, he had to pause, he gave one last look of hate on the huddled figure of the duc, and the proud, upstanding one of Yvonne, then with a laugh which sounded like that of a fiend⁠—so cruel, so callous was it, he turned on his heel, and as he strode away towards the bow his tall figure was soon absorbed in the surrounding gloom. + 

III + 

The duc de Kernogan and his daughter saw little or nothing of Martin-Roget after that. For awhile longer they caught sight of him from time to time as he walked up and down the deck with ceaseless restlessness and in the company of another man, who was much shorter and slimmer than himself and whom they had not noticed hitherto. Martin-Roget talked most of the time in a loud and excited voice, the other appearing to listen to him with a certain air of deference. Whether the conversation between these two was actually intended for the ears of the two unfortunates, or whether it was merely chance which brought certain phrases to their ears when the two men passed closely by, it were impossible to say. Certain it is that from such chance phrases they gathered that the barque would not put into Nantes, as the navigation of the Loire was suspended for the nonce by order of Proconsul Carrier. He had need of the river for his awesome and nefarious deeds. Yvonne’s ears were regaled with tales⁠—told with loud ostentation⁠—of the terrible noyades, the wholesale drowning of men, women and children, malefactors and traitors, so as to ease the burden of the guillotine. + 

After three bells it got so bitterly cold that Yvonne, fearing that her father would become seriously ill, suggested their going down to their stuffy cabins together. After all, even the foul and shut-up atmosphere of these close, airless cupboards was preferable to the propinquity of those two human fiends up on deck and the tales of horror and brutality which they loved to tell. + 

And for two hours after that, father and daughter sat in the narrow cell-like place, locked in each other’s arms. She had everything to forgive, and he everything to atone for: but Yvonne suffered so acutely, her misery was so great that she found it in her heart to pity the father whose misery must have been even greater than hers. The supreme solace of bestowing love and forgiveness and of easing the racking paroxysms of remorse which brought the unfortunate man to the verge of dementia, warmed her heart towards him and brought surcease to her own sorrow. + 