Then the gallant deed!--after all these years she could still see herself, her brother and Jeanne, her faithful maid, and poor devoted Hector all huddled up in a rickety tumbril, being dragged through the streets of Paris on the road to death. On ahead she had seen the weird outline of the guillotine silhouetted against the evening sky, whilst all around her a howling, jeering mob sang that awful refrain: "Cà ira! Cà ira! les aristos à la lanterne!" Then it was that she had felt unseen hands snatching her out of the tumbril, she had felt herself being dragged through that yelling crowd to a place where there was silence and darkness and where she knew that she was safe: thence she was conveyed--she hardly realised how--to England, where she and her brother and Jeanne and Hector, their faithful servants, had found refuge for over twenty years. "It was a gallant deed!" whispered Mme. la Duchesse once again, "and one which will always make me love every Englishman I meet, for the sake of one who was called The Scarlet Pimpernel." "Then why should you attribute vulgar ingratitude to me?" retorted the Comte reproachfully. "My feelings I imagine are as sensitive as your own. Am I not trying my best to be kind to that Mr. Clyffurde, who is an honoured guest in my house--just because it was Sir Percy Blakeney who recommended him to me?" "It can't be very difficult to be kind to such an attractive young man," was Mme. la Duchesse's dry comment. "Recommendation or no recommendation I liked your Mr. Clyffurde and if it were not so late in the day and there was still time to give my opinion, I should suggest that Mr. Clyffurde's money could quite well regild our family 'scutcheon. He is very rich too, I understand." "My good Sophie!" exclaimed the Comte in horror, "what can you be thinking of?" "Crystal principally," replied the Duchesse. "I thought Clyffurde a far nicer fellow than de Marmont." "My dear sister," said the Comte stiffly, "I really must ask you to think sometimes before you speak. Of a truth you make suggestions and comments at times which literally stagger one." "I don't see anything so very staggering in the idea of a penniless aristocrat marrying a wealthy English gentleman. . . ." "A gentleman! my dear!" exclaimed the Comte. "Well! Mr. Clyffurde is a gentleman, isn't he?" "His family is irreproachable, I believe." "Well then?" "But . . . Mr. Clyffurde . . . you know, my dear. . . ." "No! I don't know," said Madame decisively. "What is the matter with Mr. Clyffurde?" "Well! I didn't like to tell you, Sophie, immediately on your arrival yesterday," said the Comte, who was making visible efforts to mitigate the horror of what he was about to say: "but . . . as a matter of fact . . . this Mr. Clyffurde whom you met in my house last night . . . who sat next to you at my table . . . with whom you had that long and animated conversation afterwards . . . is nothing better than a shopkeeper!"