“Heu!—sometimes!”
“Ah!” said Sir Andrew, carelessly, “English travellers always know where they can get good wine, eh! my friend?—Now, tell me, my lady was desiring to know if by any chance you happen to have seen a great friend of hers, an English gentleman, who often comes to Calais on business; he is tall, and recently was on his way to Paris—my lady hoped to have met him in Calais.”
Marguerite tried not to look at Brogard, lest she should betray before him the burning anxiety with which she waited for his reply. But a free-born French citizen is never in any hurry to answer questions: Brogard took his time, then he said very slowly,—
“Tall Englishman?—To-day!—Yes.”
“You have seen him?” asked Sir Andrew, carelessly.
“Yes, to-day,” muttered Brogard, sullenly. Then he quietly took Sir Andrew’s hat from a chair close by, put it on his own head, tugged at his dirty blouse, and generally tried to express in pantomime that the individual in question wore very fine clothes. “Sacrré aristo!” he muttered, “that tall Englishman!”
Marguerite could scarce repress a scream.
“It’s Sir Percy right enough,” she murmured, “and not even in disguise!”
She smiled, in the midst of all her anxiety and through her gathering tears, at thought of “the ruling passion strong in death”; of Percy running into the wildest, maddest dangers, with the latest-cut coat upon his back, and the laces of his jabot unruffled.
“Oh! the foolhardiness of it!” she sighed. “Quick, Sir Andrew! ask the man when he went.”