ocking her in her misery--"he--you--you are
not keeping him in irons?"

"No! Oh no!" replied Chauvelin with perfect urbanity. "You see, now
that we have you, Lady Blakeney, and citizen St. Just with us we have no
reason to fear that that elusive Pimpernel will spirit himself away."

A hot retort had risen to Armand's lips. The warm Latin blood in him
rebelled against this intolerable situation, the man's sneers in the
face of Marguerite's anguish. But her restraining, gentle hand had
already pressed his. What was the use of protesting, of insulting this
brute, who cared nothing for the misery which he had caused so long as
he gained his own ends?

And Armand held his tongue and tried to curb his temper, tried to
cultivate a little of that fatalism which Chauvelin had said was
characteristic of the English. He sat beside his sister, longing to
comfort her, yet feeling that his very presence near her was an outrage
and a sacrilege. She spoke so seldom to him, even when they were alone,
that at times the awful thought which had more than once found birth in
his weary brain became crystallised and more real. Did Marguerite guess?
Had she the slightest suspicion that the awful cataclysm to which they
were tending with every revolution of the creaking coach-wheels had been
brought about by her brother's treacherous hand?

And when that thought had lodged itself quite snugly in his mind he
began to wonder whether it would not be far more simple, far more easy,
to end his miserable life in some manner that might suggest itself on
the way. When the coach crossed one of those dilapidated, parapetless
bridges, over abysses fifty metres deep, it might be so easy to throw
open the carriage door and to take one final jump into eternity.

So easy--but so damnably cowardly.

Marguerite's near presence quickly brought him back to himself. His life
was no longer his own to do with as he pleased; it belonged to the chief
whom he had betrayed, to the sister whom he must endeavour to protect.

Of Jeanne now he thought but little. He had put even the memory of her
by--tenderly, like a sprig of lavender pressed between the faded leaves
of his own happiness. His hand was no longer fit to hold that of any
pure woman--his hand had on it a deep stain, immutable, like the brand
of Cain.

Yet Marguerite beside him held his hand and together they looked out on
that dreary, dreary road and listened to of the patter of the rain and
the rumbli