In a moment now her brain was active and alert, and presently it seemed to her as if another figure—taller than those around—had crossed the barrier immediately in the wake of Chauvelin. Then she chided herself for her fancies!
It could not be her husband. Not yet! He had gone by water, and would scarce be in Boulogne before the morning!
Ah! now at last came the turn of the second-class passengers! There was a general bousculade and the human bundle began to move. Marguerite lost sight of the tent and its awe-inspiring appurtenances: she was a mere unit again in this herd on the move. She too progressed along slowly, one step at a time; it was wearisome and she was deadly tired. She was beginning to form plans now that she had arrived in France. All along she had made up her mind that she would begin by seeking out the Abbe Foucquet, for he would prove a link 'twixt her husband and herself. She knew that Percy would communicate with the abbe; had he not told her that the rescue of the devoted old man from the clutches of the Terrorists would be one of the chief objects of his journey? It had never occurred to her what she would do if she found the Abbe Foucquet gone from Boulogne.
“He! la mere! your passport!”
The rough words roused her from her meditations. She had moved forward, quite mechanically, her mind elsewhere, her thoughts not following the aim of her feet. Thus she must have crossed the bridge along with some of the crowd, must have landed on the jetty, and reached the front of the tent, without really knowing what she was doing.
Ah yes! her passport! She had quite forgotten that! But she had it by her, quite in order, given to her in a fit of tardy remorse by Demoiselle Candeille, the intimate friend of one of the most influential members of the Revolutionary Government of France.
She took the passport from the bosom of her dress and handed it to the man in the official dress.
“Your name?” he asked peremptorily.
“Celine Dumont,” she replied unhesitatingly, for had she not rehearsed all this in her mind dozens of times, until her tongue could rattle off the borrowed name as easily as it could her own; “servitor to Citizeness Desiree Candeille!”
The man who had very carefully been examining the paper the while, placed it down on the table deliberately in front of him, and said: