Listlessly she sat in the small, still deserted boudoir,
looking out through the curtained doorway on the dancing couples
beyond: looking at them, yet seeing nothing, hearing the music, yet
conscious of naught save a feeling of expectancy, of anxious, weary
waiting.
Her mind conjured up before her the vision of what was,
perhaps at this very moment, passing downstairs. The half-deserted
dining-room, the fateful hour--Chauvelin on the watch!--then, precise
to the moment, the entrance of a man, he, the Scarlet Pimpernel, the
mysterious leader, who to Marguerite had become almost unreal, so
strange, so weird was this hidden identity.
She wished she were in the supper-room, too, at this moment,
watching him as he entered; she knew that her woman's penetration
would at once recognise in the stranger's face--whoever he might
be--that strong individuality which belongs to a leader of men--to a
hero: to the mighty, high-soaring eagle, whose daring wings were
becoming entangled in the ferret's trap.
Woman-like, she thought of him with unmixed sadness; the irony of
that fate seemed so cruel which allowed the fearless lion to succumb
to the gnawing of a rat! Ah! had Armand's life not been at stake!.
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