rhaps not!... It of course will depend on you and your
personality... your feelings in such matters... and whether an English
gentleman likes to save his own skin at the expense of others."

Marguerite shivered as if from cold.

"Ah! I see," resumed Chauvelin quietly, "that your ladyship has not
quite grasped the position. That public crier is a long way off: the
words have lingered on the evening breeze and have failed to reach your
brain. Do you suppose that I and my colleagues do not know that all the
ingenuity of which the Scarlet Pimpernel is capable will now be directed
in piloting Lady Blakeney, and incidentally the Abbe Foucquet with his
nephew and niece, safely across the Channel! Four people!... Bah! a
bagatelle, for this mighty conspirator, who but lately snatched twenty
aristocrats from the prisons of Lyons.... Nay! nay! two children and
an old man were not enough to guard our precious hostage, and I was not
thinking of either the Abbe Foucquet or of the two children, when I
said that an English gentleman would not save himself at the expense of
others."

"Of whom then were you thinking, Monsieur Chauvelin? Whom else have you
set to guard the prize which you value so highly?"

"The whole city of Boulogne," he replied simply.

"I do not understand."

"Let me make my point clear. My colleague, Citizen Collot d'Herbois,
rode over from Paris yesterday; like myself he is a member of the
Committee of Public Safety whose duty it is to look after the welfare
of France by punishing all those who conspire against her laws and the
liberties of the people. Chief among these conspirators, whom it is our
duty to punish is, of course, that impudent adventurer who calls himself
the Scarlet Pimpernel. He has given the government of France a great
deal of trouble through his attempts--mostly successful, as I have
already admitted,--at frustrating the just vengeance which an oppressed
country has the right to wreak on those who have proved themselves to be
tyrants and traitors."

"Is it necessary to recapitulate all this, Monsieur Chauvelin?" she
asked impatiently.

"I think so," he replied blandly. "You see, my point is this. We feel
that in a measure now the Scarlet Pimpernel is in our power. Within the
next few hours he will land at Boulogne... Boulogne, where he has agreed
to fight a duel with me... Boulogne, where Lady Blakeney happens to
be at this present moment... as you see, Boulogne has a great
responsibili