e in this very room, the weeping servants, the
rough, half-naked soldiery--then the agony of a nine days' imprisonment
in a dark, dank prison-cell filled to overflowing with poor wretches in
the same pitiable plight as herself--the hasty trial, the insults, the
mockery:--her husband's death in prison and her own thoughts of
approaching death!

Then the gallant deed!--after all these years she could still see
herself, her brother and Jeanne, her faithful maid, and poor devoted
Hector all huddled up in a rickety tumbril, being dragged through the
streets of Paris on the road to death. On ahead she had seen the weird
outline of the guillotine silhouetted against the evening sky, whilst
all around her a howling, jeering mob sang that awful refrain: "Ca ira!
Ca ira! les aristos a la lanterne!"

Then it was that she had felt unseen hands snatching her out of the
tumbril, she had felt herself being dragged through that yelling crowd
to a place where there was silence and darkness and where she knew that
she was safe: thence she was conveyed--she hardly realised how--to
England, where she and her brother and Jeanne and Hector, their faithful
servants, had found refuge for over twenty years.

"It was a gallant deed!" whispered Mme. la Duchesse once again, "and one
which will always make me love every Englishman I meet, for the sake of
one who was called The Scarlet Pimpernel."

"Then why should you attribute vulgar ingratitude to me?" retorted the
Comte reproachfully. "My feelings I imagine are as sensitive as your
own. Am I not trying my best to be kind to that Mr. Clyffurde, who is an
honoured guest in my house--just because it was Sir Percy Blakeney who
recommended him to me?"

"It can't be very difficult to be kind to such an attractive young man,"
was Mme. la Duchesse's dry comment. "Recommendation or no recommendation
I liked your Mr. Clyffurde and if it were not so late in the day and
there was still time to give my opinion, I should suggest that Mr.
Clyffurde's money could quite well regild our family 'scutcheon. He is
very rich too, I understand."

"My good Sophie!" exclaimed the Comte in horror, "what can you be
thinking of?"

"Crystal principally," replied the Duchesse. "I thought Clyffurde a far
nicer fellow than de Marmont."

"My dear sister," said the Comte stiffly, "I really must ask you to
think sometimes before you speak. Of a truth you make suggestions and
comments at times which literally stagger one