ection, had invited her to her
house, and offered her a munificent gift in aid of a deserving cause.
She was too proud to go back now on that promise, to rescind the
contract because of an unexplainable fear. With regard to Chauvelin,
the matter stood differently: she had made him no direct offer of
hospitality: she had agreed to receive in her house the official
chaperone of an unprotected girl, but she was not called upon to show
cordiality to her own and her husband's most deadly enemy.

She was ready to dismiss him out of her life with a cursory word of
pardon and a half-expressed promise of oblivion: on that understanding
and that only she was ready to let her hand rest for the space of one
second in his.

She had looked upon her fallen enemy, seen his discomfiture and his
humiliation! Very well! Now let him pass out of her life, all the
more easily, since the last vision of him would be one of such utter
abjection as would even be unworthy of hate.

All these thoughts, feelings and struggles passed through her mind
with great rapidity. Her hesitation had lasted less than five seconds:
Chauvelin still wore the look of doubting entreaty with which he had
first begged permission to take her hand in his. With an impulsive toss
of the head, she had turned straight towards him, ready with the phrase
with which she meant to dismiss him from her sight now and forever, when
suddenly a well-known laugh broke in upon her ear, and a lazy, drawly
voice said pleasantly:

"La! I vow the air is fit to poison you! Your Royal Highness, I entreat,
let us turn our backs upon these gates of Inferno, where lost souls
would feel more at home than doth your humble servant."

The next moment His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales had entered the
tent, closely followed by Sir Percy Blakeney.

Chapter VIII: The Invitation

It was in truth a strange situation, this chance meeting between Percy
Blakeney and ex-Ambassador Chauvelin.

Marguerite looked up at her husband. She saw him shrug his broad
shoulders as he first caught sight of Chauvelin, and glance down in his
usual lazy, good-humoured manner at the shrunken figure of the silent
Frenchman. The words she meant to say never crossed her lips; she was
waiting to hear what the two men would say to one another.

The instinct of the grande dame in her, the fashionable lady accustomed
to the exigencies of society, just gave her sufficient presence of mind
to make the requi