“No. Only three days. The third day I received a communique from the Committee of General Security, together with an unconditional certificate of safety. It meant that I was free—quite free. Oh! I could scarcely believe it. I laughed and I cried until the people in the house thought that I had gone mad. The past few days had been such a horrible nightmare.”
“And then you saw Armand again?”
“Yes. They told him that I was free. And he came here to see me. He often comes; he will be here anon.”
“But are you not afraid on his account and your own? He is—he must be still—‘suspect’; a well-known adherent of the Scarlet Pimpernel, he would be safer out of Paris.”
“No! oh, no! Armand is in no danger. He, too, has an unconditional certificate of safety.”
“An unconditional certificate of safety?” asked Marguerite, whilst a deep frown of grave puzzlement appeared between her brows. “What does that mean?”
“It means that he is free to come and go as he likes; that neither he nor I have anything to fear from Heron and his awful spies. Oh! but for that sad and careworn look on Armand’s face we could be so happy; but he is so unlike himself. He is Armand and yet another; his look at times quite frightens me.”
“Yet you know why he is so sad,” said Marguerite in a strange, toneless voice which she seemed quite unable to control, for that tonelessness came from a terrible sense of suffocation, of a feeling as if her heart-strings were being gripped by huge, hard hands.
“Yes, I know,” said Jeanne half hesitatingly, as if knowing, she was still unconvinced.
“His chief, his comrade, the friend of whom you speak, the Scarlet Pimpernel, who risked his life in order to save yours, mademoiselle, is a prisoner in the hands of those that hate him.”