"Shake, my dear Sir Percy, shake!" Chauvelin riposted with well-simulated calm. "I grant you that I am a puny rat and you the most magnificent of lions; but even if I lie mangled and breathless on this stone floor at your feet, Lady Blakeney will still be a prisoner in our hands." "And you will still be wearing the worst-cut pair of breeches it has ever been my bad fortune to behold," Sir Percy retorted, quite unruffled. "Lud love you, man! Have you guillotined all the good tailors in Paris?" "You choose to be flippant, Sir Percy," Chauvelin rejoined dryly. "But, though you have chosen for the past few years to play the rôle of a brainless nincompoop, I have cause to know that behind your affectations there lurks an amount of sound common sense." "Lud, how you flatter me, my dear sir!" quoth Sir Percy airily. "I vow you had not so high an opinion of me the last time I had the honour of conversing with you. It was at Nantes; do you remember?" "There, as elsewhere, you succeeded in circumventing me. Sir Percy." "No, no!" he protested. "Not in circumventing you. Only in making you look a demmed fool!" "Call it that, if you like, sir," Chauvelin admitted with an indifferent shrug of the shoulders. "Luck has favoured you many a time. As I had the honour to tell you, you have had the laugh of us in the past, and no doubt you are under the impression that you will have it again this time." "I am such a believer in impressions, my dear sir. The impression now that I have of your charming personality is indelibly graven upon my memory." "Sir Percy Blakeney counts a good memory as one of his many accomplishments. Another is his adventurous spirit, and the gallantry which must inevitably bring him into the net which we have been at pains to spread for him. Lady Blakeney----" "Name her not, man!" Sir Percy broke in with affected deliberation; "or I verily believe that within sixty seconds you would be a dead man!" "I am not worthy to speak her name, c'est entendu," Chauvelin retorted with mock humility. "Nevertheless, Sir Percy, it is around the person of that gracious lady that the Fates will spin their web during the next few days. You may kill me. Of course, I am at this moment entirely at your mercy. But before you embark on such a perilous undertaking, will you allow me to place the position a little more clearly before you?" "Lud, man!" quoth Sir Percy with a quaint laugh. "That's what I'm here for! Think you that I have sought your agreeable company for the mere pleasure of gazing at your amiable countenance?" "I only desired to explain to you, Sir Percy, the dangers to which you expose Lady Blakeney, if you laid violent hands; upon ma 'Tis you, remember, who sought this interview--not I." "You are right, my dear sir, always right; and I'll not interrupt again. I pray you to proceed."