. "In matters of taste
the Church has never been backward. . . . Eh?"

But Chauvelin was not listening. His every faculty was now concentrated
on that door through which presently Desgas would enter. Marguerite's
thoughts, too, were centered there, for her ears had suddenly caught,
through the stillness of the night, the sound of numerous and measured
treads some distance away.

It was Desgas and his men. Another three minutes and they would be here!
Another three minutes and the awful thing would have occurred: the brave
eagle would have fallen in the ferret's trap! She would have moved
now and screamed, but she dared not; for whilst she heard the soldiers
approaching, she was looking at Percy and watching his every movement.
He was standing by the table whereon the remnants of the supper, plates,
glasses, spoons, salt and pepper-pots were scattered pell-mell. His
back was turned to Chauvelin and he was still prattling along in his own
affected and inane way, but from his pocket he had taken his snuff-box,
and quickly and suddenly he emptied the contents of the pepper-pot into
it.

Then he again turned with an inane laugh to Chauvelin,--

"Eh? Did you speak, sir?"

Chauvelin had been too intent on listening to the sound of those
approaching footsteps, to notice what his cunning adversary had been
doing. He now pulled himself together, trying to look unconcerned in the
very midst of his anticipated triumph. "No," he said presently, "that
is--as you were saying, Sir Percy--?"

"I was saying," said Blakeney, going up to Chauvelin, by the fire, "that
the Jew in Piccadilly has sold me better snuff this time than I have
ever tasted. Will you honour me, Monsieur l'Abbe?"

He stood close to Chauvelin in his own careless, DEBONNAIRE way, holding
out his snuff-box to his arch-enemy.

Chauvelin, who, as he told Marguerite once, had seen a trick or two
in his day, had never dreamed of this one. With one ear fixed on those
fast-approaching footsteps, one eye turned to that door where Desgas
and his men would presently appear, lulled into false security by the
impudent Englishman's airy manner, he never even remotely guessed the
trick which was being played upon him.

He took a pinch of snuff.

Only he, who has ever by accident sniffed vigorously a dose of pepper,
can have the faintest conception of the hopeless condition in which such
a sniff would reduce any human being.

Chauvelin felt as if his head would burst--sn