outwardly as lazy and calm as before--had a strange set
look about the mouth and firm jaw, and his slender hand, the hand of a
dandy accustomed to handle cards and dice and to play lightly with the
foils, was clutched tightly beneath the folds of the priceless Mechlin
frills.

It was but a momentary stiffening of the whole powerful frame, an
instant's flash of the ruling passion hidden within that very secretive
soul. Then he once more turned towards her, the rigid lines of his face
relaxed, he broke into a pleasant laugh, and with the most elaborate and
most courtly bow he took her hand in his and raising her fingers to his
lips, he gave the answer to her questions:

"When your ladyship has ceased to be the most admired woman in Europe,
namely, when I am in my grave."

Chapter VI: For the Poor of Paris

There was no time to say more then. For the laughing, chatting groups
of friends had once more closed up round Marguerite and her husband,
and she, ever on the alert, gave neither look nor sign that any serious
conversation had taken place between Sir Percy and herself.

Whatever she might feel or dread with regard to the foolhardy adventures
in which he still persistently embarked, no member of the League
ever guarded the secret of his chief more loyally than did Marguerite
Blakeney.

Though her heart overflowed with a passionate pride in her husband, she
was clever enough to conceal every emotion save that which Nature had
insisted on imprinting in her face, her present radiant happiness
and her irresistible love. And thus before the world she kept up that
bantering way with him, which had characterized her earlier matrimonial
life, that good-natured, easy contempt which he had so readily accepted
in those days, and which their entourage would have missed and would
have enquired after, if she had changed her manner towards him too
suddenly.

In her heart she knew full well that within Percy Blakeney's soul
she had a great and powerful rival: his wild, mad, passionate love of
adventure. For it he would sacrifice everything, even his life; she
dared not ask herself if he would sacrifice his love.

Twice in a few weeks he had been over to France: every time he went she
could not know if she would ever see him again. She could not imagine
how the French Committee of Public Safety could so clumsily allow the
hated Scarlet Pimpernel to slip through its fingers. But she never
attempted either to warn him