anything more out of him, and we might arouse his
suspicions. One never knows what spies may be lurking around these
God-forsaken places."

"What care I?" she replied lightly, "now I know that my husband is safe,
and that I shall see him almost directly!"

"Hush!" he said in genuine alarm, for she had talked quite loudly, in
the fulness of her glee, "the very walls have ears in France, these
days."

He rose quickly from the table, and walked round the bare, squalid
room, listening attentively at the door, through which Brogard has just
disappeared, and whence only muttered oaths and shuffling footsteps
could be heard. He also ran up the rickety steps that led to the attic,
to assure himself that there were no spies of Chauvelin's about the
place.

"Are we alone, Monsieur, my lacquey?" said Marguerite, gaily, as the
young man once more sat down beside her. "May we talk?"

"As cautiously as possible!" he entreated.

"Faith, man! but you wear a glum face! As for me, I could dance with
joy! Surely there is no longer any cause for fear. Our boat is on the
beach, the FOAM CREST not two miles out at sea, and my husband will be
here, under this very roof, within the next half hour perhaps. Sure!
there is naught to hinder us. Chauvelin and his gang have not yet
arrived."

"Nay, madam! that I fear we do not know."

"What do you mean?"

"He was at Dover at the same time that we were."

"Held up by the same storm, which kept us from starting."

"Exactly. But--I did not speak of it before, for I feared to alarm
you--I saw him on the beach not five minutes before we embarked.
At least, I swore to myself at the time that it was himself; he was
disguised as a CURE, so that Satan, his own guardian, would scarce have
known him. But I heard him then, bargaining for a vessel to take him
swiftly to Calais; and he must have set sail less than an hour after we
did."

Marguerite's face had quickly lost its look of joy. The terrible danger
in which Percy stood, now that he was actually on French soil, became
suddenly and horribly clear to her. Chauvelin was close upon his heels;
here in Calais, the astute diplomatist was all-powerful; a word from him
and Percy could be tracked and arrested and . . .

Every drop of blood seemed to freeze in her veins; not even during the
moments of her wildest anguish in England had she so completely realised
the imminence of the peril in which her husband stood. Chauvelin had
sworn to bring t