mademoiselle," he replied, "I am not at liberty to tell you."

"Not at liberty to tell me!" she exclaimed; "but monsieur, if I command
you--"

"At risk of falling forever under the ban of your displeasure,
mademoiselle, I would still remain silent on that subject."

She gazed on him with obvious astonishment. It was quite an unusual
thing for this spoilt darling of an admiring public to be thus openly
thwarted in her whims.

"How tiresome and pedantic!" she said, with a shrug of her pretty
shoulders and a moue of discontent. "And, oh! how ungallant! You have
learnt ugly, English ways, monsieur; for there, I am told, men hold
their womenkind in very scant esteem. There!" she added, turning with
a mock air of hopelessness towards de Batz, "am I not a most unlucky
woman? For the past two years I have used my best endeavours to catch
sight of that interesting Scarlet Pimpernel; here do I meet monsieur,
who actually knows him (so he says), and he is so ungallant that he even
refuses to satisfy the first cravings of my just curiosity."

"Citizen St. Just will tell you nothing now, mademoiselle," rejoined
de Batz with his good-humoured laugh; "it is my presence, I assure you,
which is setting a seal upon his lips. He is, believe me, aching to
confide in you, to share in your enthusiasm, and to see your beautiful
eyes glowing in response to his ardour when he describes to you the
exploits of that prince of heroes. En tete-a-tete one day, you will, I
know, worm every secret out of my discreet friend Armand."

Mademoiselle made no comment on this--that is to say, no audible
comment--but she buried the whole of her face for a few seconds among
the flowers, and Armand from amongst those flowers caught sight of a
pair of very bright brown eyes which shone on him with a puzzled look.

She said nothing more about the Scarlet Pimpernel or about England just
then, but after awhile she began talking of more indifferent subjects:
the state of the weather, the price of food, the discomforts of her own
house, now that the servants had been put on perfect equality with their
masters.

Armand soon gathered that the burning questions of the day, the horrors
of massacres, the raging turmoil of politics, had not affected her very
deeply as yet. She had not troubled her pretty head very much about the
social and humanitarian aspect of the present seething revolution.
She did not really wish to think about it at all. An artiste to her
fin