inable soup in Calais, had we not?" continued
Blakeney in the same tone of easy banter, "and wine that I vowed
was vinegar. Monsieur... er... Chaubertin... no, no, I beg pardon...
Chauvelin... Monsieur Chauvelin and I quite agreed upon that point.
The only matter on which we were not quite at one was the question of
snuff."

"Snuff?" laughed His Royal Highness, who seemed vastly amused.

"Yes, your Royal Highness... snuff... Monsieur Chauvelin here had--if I
may be allowed to say so--so vitiated a taste in snuff that he prefers
it with an admixture of pepper... Is that not so, Monsieur... er...
Chaubertin?"

"Chauvelin, Sir Percy," remarked the ex-ambassador drily.

He was determined not to lose his temper and looked urbane and pleasant,
whilst his impudent enemy was enjoying a joke at his expense. Marguerite
the while had not taken her eyes off the keen, shrewd face. Whilst the
three men talked, she seemed suddenly to have lost her sense of the
reality of things. The present situation appeared to her strangely
familiar, like a dream which she had dreamt oft times before.

Suddenly it became absolutely clear to her that the whole scene had been
arranged and planned: the booth with its flaring placard, Demoiselle
Candeille soliciting her patronage, her invitation to the young actress,
Chauvelin's sudden appearance, all, all had been concocted and arranged,
not here, not in England at all, but out there in Paris, in some dark
gathering of blood-thirsty ruffians, who had invented a final trap for
the destruction of the bold adventurer, who went by the name of the
Scarlet Pimpernel.

And she also was only a puppet, enacting a part which had been written
for her: she had acted just as THEY had anticipated, had spoken the very
words they had meant her to say: and when she looked at Percy, he seemed
supremely ignorant of it all, unconscious of this trap of the existence
of which everyone here present was aware, save indeed himself. She
would have fought against this weird feeling of obsession, of being a
mechanical toy would up to do certain things, but this she could not do;
her will appeared paralysed, her tongue even refused her service.

As in a dream she heard His Royal Highness ask for the name of the young
actress who was soliciting alms for the poor of Paris.

That also had been prearranged. His Royal Highness for the moment was
also a puppet, made to dance, to speak and to act as Chauvelin and his
colleagues