"I know all that, my poor André," sighed Madame in a more conciliatory spirit, "I know moreover that you yourself haven't a sou either, in spite of your grandeur and your prejudices. . . . Money must be got somehow, and our ancient family 'scutcheon must be regilt at any cost. I know that we must keep up this state pertaining to the old regime, we must have our lacqueys and our liveries, sycophants around us and gaping yokels on our way when we sally out into the open. . . . We must blot out from our lives those twenty years spent in a democratic and enlightened country where no one is ashamed either of poverty or of honest work--and above all things we must forget that there has ever been a revolution which sent M. le Comte de Cambray, Commander of the Order of the Holy Ghost, Grand Cross of the Ordre du Lys, Seigneur of Montfleury and St. Eynard, hereditary Grand Chamberlain of France, to teach French and drawing in an English Grammar School. . . ." "You wrong me there, Sophie, I wish to forget nothing of the past twenty years." "I thought that you had given your memory a holiday." "I forget nothing," he reiterated with dignified emphasis, "neither the squalid poverty which I endured, nor the bitter experiences which I gleaned in exile." "Nor the devotion of those who saved your life." "And yours . . ." he interposed. "And mine, at risk of their own." "Perhaps you will believe me when I tell you that not a day goes by but Crystal and I speak of Sir Percy Blakeney, and of his gallant League of the Scarlet Pimpernel." "Well! we owe our lives to them," said Madame with deep-drawn sigh. "I wonder if we shall ever see any of those fine fellows again!" "God only knows," sighed M. le Comte in response. "But," he continued more lightly, "as you know the League itself has ceased to be. We saw very little of Sir Percy and Lady Blakeney latterly for we were too poor ever to travel up to London. Crystal and I saw them, before we left England, and I then had the opportunity of thanking Sir Percy Blakeney for the last time, for the many valuable French lives which his plucky little League had saved." "He is indeed a gallant gentleman," said Mme. la Duchesse gently, even whilst her bright, shrewd eyes gazed straight out before her as if on the great bare walls of her own ancestral home, the ghostly hand of memory had conjured up pictures of long ago:--her own, her husband's and her brother's arrest here in this very room, the weeping servants, the rough, half-naked soldiery--then the agony of a nine days' imprisonment in a dark, dank prison-cell filled to overflowing with poor wretches in the same pitiable plight as herself--the hasty trial, the insults, the mockery:--her husband's death in prison and her own thoughts of approaching death!