The Elusive Pimpernel Baroness Orczy (read more books txt) 📖

too long.⁠ ⁠… And now I can’t take Ffoulkes away from his young wife, and Tony and the others are so mighty slow.”

“Percy!” she said once more with tender earnestness.

“I know, I know,” he said with a slight frown of self-reproach. “La! but I don’t deserve your solicitude. Heavens know what a brute I was for years, whilst I neglected you, and ignored the noble devotion which I, alas! do even now so little to deserve.”

She would have said something more, but was interrupted by the entrance of Juliette Marny into the room.

“Some of your guests have arrived, Lady Blakeney,” said the young girl, apologising for her seeming intrusion. “I thought you would wish to know.”

Juliette looked very young and girlish in a simple white gown, without a single jewel on her arms or neck. Marguerite regarded her with unaffected approval.

“You look charming tonight, Mademoiselle, does she not, Sir Percy?”

“Thanks to your bounty,” smiled Juliette, a trifle sadly. “Whilst I dressed tonight, I felt how I should have loved to wear my dear mother’s jewels, of which she used to be so proud.”

“We must hope that you will recover them, dear, some day,” said Marguerite vaguely, as she led the young girl out of the small study towards the larger reception rooms.

“Indeed I hope so,” sighed Juliette. “When times became so troublous in France after my dear father’s death, his confessor and friend, the Abbé Foucquet, took charge of all my mother’s jewels for me. He said they would be safe with the ornaments of his own little church at Boulogne. He feared no sacrilege, and thought they would be most effectually hidden there, for no one would dream of looking for the Marny diamonds in the crypt of a country church.”

Marguerite said nothing in reply. Whatever her own doubts might be upon such a subject, it could serve no purpose to disturb the young girl’s serenity.

“Dear Abbé Foucquet,” said Juliette after a while, “his is the kind of devotion which I feel sure will never be found under the new regimes of anarchy and of so-called equality. He would have laid down his life for my father or for me. And I know that he would never part with the jewels which I entrusted to his care, whilst he had breath and strength to defend them.”

Marguerite would have wished to pursue the subject a little further. It was very pathetic to witness poor Juliette’s hopes and confidences, which she felt sure would never be realised.

Lady Blakeney knew so much of what was going on in France just now: spoliations, confiscations, official thefts, open robberies, all in the name of equality, of fraternity and of patriotism. She knew nothing, of course, of the Abbé Foucquet, but the tender little picture of the devoted old man, painted by Juliette’s words, had appealed strongly to her sympathetic heart.

Instinct and knowledge of the political aspect of France told her that by entrusting valuable family jewels to the old Abbé, Juliette had most unwittingly placed the man she so much trusted in danger of persecution at the hands of a government which did not even admit the legality of family possessions. However, there was neither time nor opportunity now to enlarge upon the subject. Marguerite resolved to recur to it a little later, when she would be alone with Mlle. de Marny, and above all when she could take counsel with her husband as to the best means of recovering the young girl’s property for her, whilst relieving a devoted old man from the dangerous responsibility which he had so selflessly undertaken.

In the meanwhile the two women had reached the first of the long line of state apartments wherein the brilliant fête was to take place. The staircase and the hall below were already filled with the early arrivals. Bidding Juliette to remain in the ballroom, Lady Blakeney now took up her stand on the exquisitely decorated landing, ready to greet her guests. She had a smile and a pleasant word for all, as, in a constant stream, the elite of London fashionable society began to file past her, exchanging the elaborate greetings which the stilted mode of the day prescribed to this butterfly-world.

The lackeys in the hall shouted the names of the guests as they passed up the stairs: names celebrated in politics, in worlds of sport, of science or of art, great historic names, humble, newly-made ones, noble illustrious titles. The spacious rooms were filling fast. His Royal Highness, so ’twas said, had just stepped out of his barge. The noise of laughter and chatter was incessant, like unto a crowd of gaily-plumaged birds. Huge bunches of apricot-coloured roses in silver vases made the air heavy with their subtle perfume. Fans began to flutter. The string band struck the preliminary cords of the gavotte.

At that moment the lackeys at the foot of the stairs called out in stentorian tones:

“Mademoiselle Désirée Candeille! and Monsieur Chauvelin!”

Marguerite’s heart gave a slight flutter; she felt a sudden tightening of the throat. She did not see Candeille at first, only the slight figure of Chauvelin dressed all in black, as usual, with head bent and hands clasped behind his back; he was slowly mounting the wide staircase, between a double row of brilliantly attired men and women, who looked with no small measure of curiosity at the ex-ambassador from revolutionary France.

Demoiselle Candeille was leading the way up the stairs. She paused on the landing in order to make before her hostess a most perfect and most elaborate curtsey. She looked smiling and radiant, beautifully dressed, a small wreath of wrought gold leaves in her hair, her only jewel an absolutely regal one, a magnificent necklace of diamonds round her shapely throat.

XI The Challenge

It all occurred just before midnight, in one of the smaller rooms, which lead in enfilade from the principal ballroom.

Dancing had been going on for some time, but the evening was close, and there seemed to be a growing desire on