y down our lives for the Scarlet Pimpernel.
Already I, as his lieutenant, have been selected as the leader of as
determined a gang as has ever entered on a work of rescue before. We
leave for Paris to-morrow, and if human pluck and devotion can destroy
mountains then we'll destroy them. Our watchword is: 'God save the
Scarlet Pimpernel.'"

He knelt beside her chair and kissed the cold fingers which, with a sad
little smile, she held out to him.

"And God bless you all!" she murmured.

Suzanne had risen to her feet when her husband knelt; now he stood up
beside her. The dainty young woman hardly more than a child--was doing
her best to restrain her tears.

"See how selfish I am," said Marguerite. "I talk calmly of taking your
husband from you, when I myself know the bitterness of such partings."

"My husband will go where his duty calls him," said Suzanne with
charming and simple dignity. "I love him with all my heart, because
he is brave and good. He could not leave his comrade, who is also his
chief, in the lurch. God will protect him, I know. I would not ask him
to play the part of a coward."

Her brown eyes glowed with pride. She was the true wife of a soldier,
and with all her dainty ways and childlike manners she was a splendid
woman and a staunch friend. Sir Percy Blakeney bad saved her entire
family from death, the Comte and Comtesse de Tournai, the Vicomte, her
brother, and she herself all owed their lives to the Scarlet Pimpernel.

This she was not like to forget.

"There is but little danger for us, I fear me," said Sir Andrew lightly;
"the revolutionary Government only wants to strike at a head, it cares
nothing for the limbs. Perhaps it feels that without our leader we are
enemies not worthy of persecution. If there are any dangers, so much
the better," he added; "but I don't anticipate any, unless we succeed in
freeing our chief; and having freed him, we fear nothing more."

"The same applies to me, Sir Andrew," rejoined Marguerite earnestly.
"Now that they have captured Percy, those human fiends will care naught
for me. If you succeed in freeing Percy I, like you, will have nothing
more to fear, and if you fail--"

She paused and put her small, white hand on Sir Andrew's arm.

"Take me with you, Sir Andrew," she entreated; "do not condemn me to
the awful torture of weary waiting, day after day, wondering, guessing,
never daring to hope, lest hope deferred be more hard to bear than
dreary hopel