The Scarlet Pimpernel

d to breathe more freely. She heaved a deep sigh, like one who had long been oppressed with the h

orch and looked out to sea. Silhouetted against the ever-changing sky, a graceful schooner, with white sails set, was gently dancing in the breeze. The DAY DREAM it was, Sir Percy Blakeney's yacht, which was ready to take Armand St. Just back to France into the v

assive chin, and who walked with that peculiar rolling gait which invariably betrays the seafaring man: the other, a young, slight figure, neatly

aw him approaching from the distance, and a happy sm

ere locked in each other's arms, while the

gs?" asked Lady Blakeney, "befor

an hour, your ladyship," replied the

Marguerite led her bro

far from me, Armand! Oh! I can't believe that you are going, dear! These last few days-

oung man gently, "a narrow channel to cross

e, Armand-but that awful P

t lace fichu waving round her, like a white and supple snake. She tried to pierce the distance far away, beyond which lay the sho

guerite," said Armand, who seem

, so am I . . . we have the same thoughts, the same enthusiasm for liberty a

tively, as he threw a quick,

ere in England!" She clung to him suddenly with strong, almost motherly, passion: "Don

blue and loving, gazed appealingly at the young

gently, "who would remember that, when France is in pe

le crept back into her face, pathetic in t

ny lofty virtues. . . . I assure you little sins are far less danger

ssible . . .

only you . . . to . .

e other interests now. P

fulness crept into her

. . . on

urely

istress yourself on my accou

something always seemed to stop me when I wished to question you. But, somehow, I feel as if I could not go away and leave you now without asking you on

t?" she as

I mean, does he know the part you played

temptuous laugh, which was like a ja

al that ultimately sent him and all his family to the guillotine?

tances-which so completely ex

sources; my confession came too tardily, it seems. I could no longer plead

nd

f knowing that the biggest fool in England

nd St. Just, who loved her so dearly, felt that he had

ed you, Margot," h

to worship me with a curious intensity of concentrated passion, which went straight to my heart. I had never loved any one before, as you know, and I was four-and-twenty then-so I naturally thought that it was not in my nature to love. But it has always seemed to me that it MUST be HEAVENLY to be loved blindly, passionately, wholly . . . worshipped, in fact-and the very fact t

allowing his own thoughts to run riot. It was terrible to see a young and beautiful woman-a girl in all but name-still standing almost at the threshold of he

English gentlemen. A Blakeney had died on Bosworth field, another had sacrified life and fortune for the sake of a treacherous Stuart: and that same pride-foolish and prejudiced as the republican Armand would call it-must have been stung to the quick on hearing of the sin which lay at Lady Blakeney's door. She had been young, misguided, ill-advised perhaps. Armand knew that: her impulses and im

Strange extremes meet in love's pathway: this woman, who had had half intellectual Europe at her feet, might perhaps have set her affections on a fool. Marguerite was gazing out towards the s

her, these two, for their parents had died when Armand was still a youth, and Marguerite but a child. He, some eight years her senior, had watched over her until her marriage; had chape

to have built up a slight, thin partition between brother and sister; the same deep, intense love was still

is own views and sympathies might become modified, even as the excesses, committed by those who had been his friends, grew in horror and in intensity. And Marguerite co

t few sadly-sweet moments by speaking about herself. She led him gently along the cliffs, then down to the beach; th