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Like a great dog after a nap, Sir Percy Blakeney straightened his long back and stretched it out to its full length. "La!" he said pleasantly, "my ever engaging friend from Calais. Sir, your servant. Meseems we are ever destined to discuss amiable matters, in an amiable spirit.... A glass of punch, Monsieur... er... Chauvelin?"
What had happened to Sir Percy Blakeney now, what to Marguerite, he neither knew nor cared. No doubt the Englishman had picked himself up and got away through the window or the door: he would be anxious to get his wife out of the town as quickly as possible. The Angelus would ring directly, the gates would be opened, the harbour made free to everyone....
Just that was enough for Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, the most devoted follower, the most perfect friend the Scarlet Pimpernel would ever know. Ffoulkes now went to the horse, detached the nose-bag, and undid the nooses of the hobble and of the tether. "Will you get in now, Blakeney?" he said; "we are ready."
General Blakeney had arrived, with the garrison of Minorca, at Portsmouth, in the month of November, and been received with expressions of tumultuous joy: every place through which he passed celebrated his return with bonfires, illuminations, bell-ringing, and acclamations: every mouth was opened in his praise, extolling him for the gallant defence he had made in the castle of St. Philip.
"And my dear friend, Sir Percy Blakeney? I had hoped to meet him in Paris. Ah! but no doubt he has been busy very busy; but I live in hopes I live in hopes. See how kindly Chance has treated me," he continued in the same bland and mocking tones.
The same sense of mystery and unreality overcame Chauvelin again as he looked on the miserable creature in whom, an hour ago, he had recognised the super-exquisite Sir Percy Blakeney. Now he could only see a vague outline in the gloom: the stooping shoulders, the long limbs, that naked piece of shoulder which caught a feeble reflex from the distant light.
As His Highness was standing in the doorway itself, no one could of course cross the threshold, but everyone could see into the room, and could take stock of the various actors in the little comedy. They were witnessing a quarrel between the French envoy and Sir Percy Blakeney wherein the former was evidently in deadly earnest and the latter merely politely bored.
For a long while after he had gone Blakeney stood silent and motionless in the middle of the room. Armand's last words lingered in his ear: "Think of Marguerite!" The walls had fallen away from around him the window, the river below, the Temple prison had all faded away, merged in the chaos of his thoughts.
"Surely, Lady Blakeney, you have no though of patronising that gruesome spectacle?" said Lord Anthony Dewhurst, as Marguerite almost mechanically had paused within a few yards of the solitary booth. "I don't know," she said, with enforced gaiety, "the place seems to attract me.
Outside the rain had ceased, and through the swiftly passing clouds, the pale rays of an after-storm sun shone upon the beautiful white coast of Kent and the quaint, irregular houses that clustered round the Admiralty Pier. Marguerite Blakeney stepped on to the porch and looked out to sea.
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