But I heard him then, bargaining for a vessel to take
him swiftly to Calais; and he must have set sail less than an hour
after we did."
Marguerite's face had quickly lost its look of joy. The
terrible danger in which Percy stood, now that he was actually on
French soil, became suddenly and horribly clear to her. Chauvelin was
close upon his heels; here in Calais, the astute diplomatist was
all-powerful; a word from him and Percy could be tracked and arrested
and. . .
Every drop of blood seemed to freeze in her veins; not even
during the moments of her wildest anguish in England had she so
completely realised the imminence of the peril in which her husband
stood. Chauvelin had sworn to bring the Scarlet Pimpernel to the
guillotine, and now the daring plotter, whose anonymity hitherto had
been his safeguard, stood revealed through her own hand, to his most
bitter, most relentless enemy.
Chauvelin--when he waylaid Lord Tony and Sir Andrew Ffoulkes
in the coffee-room of "The Fisherman's Rest"--had obtained possession
of all the plans of this latest expedition. Armand St. Just, the
Comte de Tournay and other fugitive royalists were to have met the
Scarlet Pimpernel--or rather, as it had been originally arranged, two
of his emissaries--on this day, the 2nd of October, at a place
evidently known to the league, and vaguely alluded to as the "Pere
Blanchard's hut.
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