Free The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Page B

few
years later sent most of those haughty heads to the guillotine.
    Marguerite remembered it all: what her brother must have suffered in
his manhood and his pride must have been appalling; what she suffered
through him and with him she never attempted even to analyse.
    Then the day of retribution came. St. Cyr and his kin had found their
masters, in those same plebeians whom they had despised. Armand and
Marguerite, both intellectual, thinking beings, adopted with the
enthusiasm of their years the Utopian doctrines of the Revolution,
while the Marquis de St. Cyr and his family fought inch by inch for the
retention of those privileges which had placed them socially above their
fellow-men. Marguerite, impulsive, thoughtless, not calculating the
purport of her words, still smarting under the terrible insult her
brother had suffered at the Marquis' hands, happened to hear—amongst
her own coterie—that the St. Cyrs were in treasonable correspondence
with Austria, hoping to obtain the Emperor's support to quell the
growing revolution in their own country.
    In those days one denunciation was sufficient: Marguerite's few
thoughtless words anent the Marquis de St. Cyr bore fruit within
twenty-four hours. He was arrested. His papers were searched: letters
from the Austrian Emperor, promising to send troops against the Paris
populace, were found in his desk. He was arraigned for treason against
the nation, and sent to the guillotine, whilst his family, his wife and
his sons, shared in this awful fate.
    Marguerite, horrified at the terrible consequences of her own
thoughtlessness, was powerless to save the Marquis: his own coterie, the
leaders of the revolutionary movement, all proclaimed her as a heroine:
and when she married Sir Percy Blakeney, she did not perhaps altogether
realise how severely he would look upon the sin, which she had so
inadvertently committed, and which still lay heavily upon her soul. She
made full confession of it to her husband, trusting his blind love for
her, her boundless power over him, to soon make him forget what might
have sounded unpleasant to an English ear.
    Certainly at the moment he seemed to take it very quietly; hardly, in
fact, did he appear to understand the meaning of all she said; but what
was more certain still, was that never after that could she detect the
slightest sign of that love, which she once believed had been wholly
hers. Now they had drifted quite apart, and Sir Percy seemed to have
laid aside his love for her, as he would an ill-fitting glove. She tried
to rouse him by sharpening her ready wit against his dull intellect;
endeavouring to excite his jealousy, if she could not rouse his love;
tried to goad him to self-assertion, but all in vain. He remained the
same, always passive, drawling, sleepy, always courteous, invariably a
gentleman: she had all that the world and a wealthy husband can give to
a pretty woman, yet on this beautiful summer's evening, with the white
sails of the DAY DREAM finally hidden by the evening shadows, she felt
more lonely than that poor tramp who plodded his way wearily along the
rugged cliffs.
    With another heavy sigh, Marguerite Blakeney turned her back upon the
sea and cliffs, and walked slowly back towards "The Fisherman's Rest."
As she drew near, the sound of revelry, of gay, jovial laughter, grew
louder and more distinct. She could distinguish Sir Andrew Ffoulkes'
pleasant voice, Lord Tony's boisterous guffaws, her husband's
occasional, drawly, sleepy comments; then realising the loneliness of
the road and the fast gathering gloom round her, she quickened her steps
. . . the next moment she perceived a stranger coming rapidly towards
her. Marguerite did not look up: she was not the least nervous, and "The
Fisherman's Rest" was now well within call.
    The stranger paused when he saw Marguerite coming quickly towards him,
and just as she was about to slip past him, he said very quietly:
    "Citoyenne St. Just."
    Marguerite uttered a little cry of