ur father?"

"Oh!" said Suzanne with mad glee, "the best we could possibly hear. My
Lord Hastings came to see maman early this morning. He said that all is
now well with dear papa, and we may safely expect him here in England in
less than four days."

"Yes," said Marguerite, whose glowing eyes were fastened on Suzanne's
lips, as she continued merrily:

"Oh, we have no fear now! You don't know, CHERIE, that that great and
noble Scarlet Pimpernel himself has gone to save papa. He has gone,
CHERIE . . . actually gone . . ." added Suzanne excitedly, "He was in
London this morning; he will be in Calais, perhaps, to-morrow . . . where
he will meet papa . . . and then . . . and then . . ."

The blow had fallen. She had expected it all along, though she had tried
for the last half-hour to delude herself and to cheat her fears. He had
gone to Calais, had been in London this morning . . . he . . . the
Scarlet Pimpernel . . . Percy Blakeney . . . her husband . . . whom she had
betrayed last night to Chauvelin.

Percy . . . Percy . . . her husband . . . the Scarlet Pimpernel . . . Oh!
how could she have been so blind? She understood it all now--all at once
. . . that part he played--the mask he wore . . . in order to throw dust
in everybody's eyes.

And all for the sheer sport and devilry of course!--saving men, women
and children from death, as other men destroy and kill animals for the
excitement, the love of the thing. The idle, rich man wanted some aim
in life--he, and the few young bucks he enrolled under his banner, had
amused themselves for months in risking their lives for the sake of an
innocent few.

Perhaps he had meant to tell her when they were first married; and then
the story of the Marquis de St. Cyr had come to his ears, and he had
suddenly turned from her, thinking, no doubt, that she might someday
betray him and his comrades, who had sworn to follow him; and so he had
tricked her, as he tricked all others, whilst hundreds now owed their
lives to him, and many families owed him both life and happiness.

The mask of an inane fop had been a good one, and the part consummately
well played. No wonder that Chauvelin's spies had failed to detect, in
the apparently brainless nincompoop, the man whose reckless daring and
resourceful ingenuity had baffled the keenest French spies, both in
France and in England. Even last night when Chauvelin went to Lord
Grenville's dining-room to seek that daring Scarlet Pimperne