. .the Scarlet Pimpernel. . .
Oh! how could she have been so blind? She understood it all now--all
at once. . .that part he played--the mask he wore. . .in order to
throw dust in everybody's eyes.
And all for the sheer sport and devilry of course!--saving
men, women and children from death, as other men destroy and kill
animals for the excitement, the love of the thing. The idle, rich man
wanted some aim in life--he, and the few young bucks he enrolled under
his banner, had amused themselves for months in risking their lives
for the sake of an innocent few.
Perhaps he had meant to tell her when they were first married;
and then the story of the Marquis de St. Cyr had come to his ears, and
he had suddenly turned from her, thinking, no doubt, that she might
someday betray him and his comrades, who had sworn to follow him; and
so he had tricked her, as he tricked all others, whilst hundreds now
owed their lives to him, and many families owed him both life and
happiness.
The mask of an inane fop had been a good one, and the part
consummately well played. No wonder that Chauvelin's spies had failed
to detect, in the apparently brainless nincompoop, the man whose
reckless daring and resourceful ingenuity had baffled the keenest
French spies, both in France and in England.
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