A few days ago the weakly courier from France had brought her a line from Sir Percy, together with the promise that she should rest in his arms on the 1st of May. And Marguerite had come down to the creeper-covered cottage knowing that, despite obstacles which might prove insuperable to others, Percy would keep his word.
She had stolen out at dawn to wait for him on the pier; and sure enough, as soon as the May day sun, which had risen to-day in his glory as if to crown her brief happiness with warmth and radiance, had dissipated the morning mist, her yearning eyes had spied the smart white gig which had put off from the Day-Dream, leaving the graceful ship to await the turn of the tide before putting into port.
Since then, every moment of the day had been one of rapture. The first sight of her husband in his huge caped coat, which seemed to add further inches to his great height, his call of triumph when he saw her, his arms outstretched, there, far away in the small boat, with a gesture of such infinite longing that for a second or two tears obscured Marguerite's vision. Then the drawing up of the boat against the landing-stage; Percy's spring ashore; his voice, his look; the strength of his arms; the ardour of his embrace. Rapture, in truth, to which the thought of its brief duration alone lent a touch of bitterness.
But of parting again Marguerite would not think—not to-day, while the birds were singing a deafening pæon of joy; not while the scent of growing grass, of moist, travailing earth, was in her nostrils; not while the sap was in the trees, and the gummy crimson buds of the chestnuts were bursting into leaf. Not while she wandered up the narrow lane between hedges of blackthorn in bloom, with Percy's arm around her, his loved voice in her ear, his merry laughter echoing through the sweet morning air.
After that, breakfast in the low, raftered room—the hot, savoury milk, the home-baked bread, the home-churned butter. Then the long, delicious, intimate talk of love, and of yearnings, of duty and gallant deeds. Blakeney kept nothing secret from his wife; and what he did not tell her, that she easily guessed. But it was from the members of the League that she learned all there was to know of heroism and selflessness in the perilous adventures through which her husband passed with so light-hearted a gaiety.
"You should see me as an asthmatic reprobate, m'dear," he would say, with his infectious laugh. "And hear that cough! Lud love you, but I am mightily proud of that cough! Poor old Rateau does not do it better himself; and he is genuinely asthmatic."
He gave her an example of his prowess; but she would not allow him to go on. The sound was too weird, and conjured up visions which to-day she would fain forget.
"Rateau was a real find," he went on more seriously; "because he is three parts an imbecile and as obedient as a dog. When some of those devils are on my track, lo! the real Rateau appears and yours truly vanishes where no one can find him!"
"Pray God," she murmured involuntarily, "they never may!"
"They won't, m'dear, they won't!" he asserted with light-hearted conviction. "They have become so confused now between Rateau the coalheaver, the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel, and the problematic English milor, that all three of these personalities can appear before their eyes and they will let 'em all escape! I assure you that the confusion between the Scarlet Pimpernel who was in the antechamber of Mother Théot on that fateful afternoon, and again at the Fraternal Supper in the Rue St Honoré, and the real Rateau who was at Mother Théot's while that same exciting supper party was going on, was so great that not one of those murdering reprobates could trust his own eyes and ears, and that we got away as easily as rabbits out of a torn net."