. ."

"I know all that, my poor Andre," sighed Madame in a more conciliatory
spirit, "I know moreover that you yourself haven't a sou either, in
spite of your grandeur and your prejudices. . . . Money must be got
somehow, and our ancient family 'scutcheon must be regilt at any cost. I
know that we must keep up this state pertaining to the old regime, we
must have our lacqueys and our liveries, sycophants around us and gaping
yokels on our way when we sally out into the open. . . . We must blot
out from our lives those twenty years spent in a democratic and
enlightened country where no one is ashamed either of poverty or of
honest work--and above all things we must forget that there has ever
been a revolution which sent M. le Comte de Cambray, Commander of the
Order of the Holy Ghost, Grand Cross of the Ordre du Lys, Seigneur of
Montfleury and St. Eynard, hereditary Grand Chamberlain of France, to
teach French and drawing in an English Grammar School. . . ."

"You wrong me there, Sophie, I wish to forget nothing of the past twenty
years."

"I thought that you had given your memory a holiday."

"I forget nothing," he reiterated with dignified emphasis, "neither the
squalid poverty which I endured, nor the bitter experiences which I
gleaned in exile."

"Nor the devotion of those who saved your life."

"And yours . . ." he interposed.

"And mine, at risk of their own."

"Perhaps you will believe me when I tell you that not a day goes by but
Crystal and I speak of Sir Percy Blakeney, and of his gallant League of
the Scarlet Pimpernel."

"Well! we owe our lives to them," said Madame with deep-drawn sigh. "I
wonder if we shall ever see any of those fine fellows again!"

"God only knows," sighed M. le Comte in response. "But," he continued
more lightly, "as you know the League itself has ceased to be. We saw
very little of Sir Percy and Lady Blakeney latterly for we were too poor
ever to travel up to London. Crystal and I saw them, before we left
England, and I then had the opportunity of thanking Sir Percy Blakeney
for the last time, for the many valuable French lives which his plucky
little League had saved."

"He is indeed a gallant gentleman," said Mme. la Duchesse gently, even
whilst her bright, shrewd eyes gazed straight out before her as if on
the great bare walls of her own ancestral home, the ghostly hand of
memory had conjured up pictures of long ago:--her own, her husband's and
her brother's arrest her