The Scarlet Pimpernel. Baroness Orczy

      He had lolled into the old-fashioned inn parlour, shaking the wet off his fine overcoat; then putting up a gold-rimmed eye-glass to his lazy blue eye, he surveyed the company, upon whom an embarrassed silence had suddenly fallen.

      “How do, Tony? How do, Ffoulkes?” he said, recognizing the two young men and shaking them by the hand. “Zounds, my dear fellow,” he added, smothering a slight yawn, “did you ever see such a beastly day? Demmed climate this.”

      With a quaint little laugh, half of embarrassment and half of sarcasm, Marguerite had turned towards her husband, and was surveying him from head to foot, with an amused little twinkle in her merry blue eyes.

      “La!” said Sir Percy, after a moment or two’s silence, as no one offered any comment, “how sheepish you all look … What’s up?”

      “Oh, nothing, Sir Percy,” replied Marguerite, with a certain amount of gaiety, which, however, sounded somewhat forced, “nothing to disturb your equanimity – only an insult to your wife.”

      The laugh which accompanied this remark was evidently intended to reassure Sir Percy as to the gravity of the incident. It apparently succeeded in that, for echoing the laugh, he rejoined placidly—

      “La, m’dear! you don’t say so. Begad! who was the bold man who dared to tackle you – eh?”

      Lord Tony tried to interpose, but had no time to do so, for the young Vicomte had already quickly stepped forward.

      “Monsieur,” he said, prefixing his little speech with an elaborate bow, and speaking in broken English, “my mother, the Comtesse de Tournay de Basserive, has offenced Madame, who, I see, is your wife. I cannot ask your pardon for my mother; what she does is right in my eyes. But I am ready to offer you the usual reparation between men of honour.”

      The young man drew up his slim stature to its full height and looked very enthusiastic, very proud, and very hot as he gazed at six foot odd of gorgeousness, as represented by Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart.

      “Lud, Sir Andrew,” said Marguerite, with one of her merry infectious laughs, “look on that pretty picture – the English turkey and the French bantam.”

      The simile was quite perfect, and the English turkey looked down with complete bewilderment upon the dainty little French bantam, which hovered quite threateningly around him.

      “La! sir,” said Sir Percy at last, putting up his eye glass and surveying the young Frenchman with undisguised wonderment, “where, in the cuckoo’s name, did you learn to speak English?”

      “Monsieur!” protested the Vicomte, somewhat abashed at the way his warlike attitude had been taken by the ponderous-looking Englishman.

      “I protest ’tis marvellous!” continued Sir Percy, imperturbably, “demmed marvellous! Don’t you think so, Tony – eh? I vow I can’t speak the French lingo like that. What?”

      “Nay, I’ll vouch for that!” rejoined Marguerite, “Sir Percy has a British accent you could cut with a knife.”

      “Monsieur,” interposed the Vicomte earnestly, and in still more broken English, “I fear you have not understand. I offer you the only posseeble reparation among gentlemen.”

      “What the devil is that?” asked Sir Percy, blandly.

      “My sword, Monsieur,” replied the Vicomte, who, though still bewildered, was beginning to lose his temper.

      “You are a sportsman, Lord Tony,” said Marguerite, merrily; “ten to one on the little bantam.”

      But Sir Percy was staring sleepily at the Vicomte for a moment or two, through his partly closed heavy lids, then he smothered another yawn, stretched his long limbs, and turned leisurely away.

      “Lud love you, sir,” he muttered good-humouredly, “demmit, young man, what’s the good of your sword to me?”

      What the Vicomte thought and felt at that moment, when that long-limbed Englishman treated him with such marked insolence, might fill volumes of sound reflections … What he said resolved itself into a single articulate word, for all the others were choked in his throat by his surging wrath—

      “A duel, Monsieur,” he stammered.

      Once more Blakeney turned, and from his high altitude looked down on the choleric little man before him; but not even for a second did he seem to lose his own imperturbable good-humour. He laughed his own pleasant and inane laugh, and burying his slender, long hands into the capacious pockets of his overcoat, he said leisurely – “a bloodthirsty young ruffian, Do you want to make a hole in a law-abiding man? … As for me, sir, I never fight duels,” he added, as he placidly sat down and stretched his long, lazy legs out before him. “Demmed uncomfortable things, duels, ain’t they, Tony?”

      Now the Vicomte had no doubt vaguely heard that in England the fashion of duelling amongst gentlemen had been surpressed by the law with a very stern hand; still to him, a Frenchman, whose notions of bravery and honour were based upon a code that had centuries of tradition to back it, the spectacle of a gentleman actually refusing to fight a duel was a little short of an enormity. In his mind he vaguely pondered whether he should strike that long-legged Englishman in the face and call him a coward, or whether such conduct in a lady’s presence might be deemed ungentlemanly, when Marguerite happily interposed.

      “I pray you, Lord Tony,” she said in that gentle, sweet, musical voice of hers, “I pray you play the peacemaker. The child is bursting with rage, and,” she added with a soupçon of dry sarcasm, “might do Sir Percy an injury.” She laughed a mocking little laugh, which, however, did not in the least disturb her husband’s placid equanimity. “The British turkey has had the day,” she said. “Sir Percy would provoke all the saints in the calendar and keep his temper the while.”

      But already Blakeney, good-humoured as ever, had joined in the laugh against himself.

      “Demmed smart that now, wasn’t it?” he said, turning pleasantly to the Vicomte. “Clever woman my wife, sir … You will find that out if you live long enough in England.”

      “Sir Percy is right, Vicomte,” here interposed Lord Antony, laying a friendly hand on the young Frenchman’s shoulder. “It would hardly be fitting that you should commence your career in England by provoking him to a duel.”

      For a moment longer the Vicomte hesitated, then with a slight shrug of the shoulders directed against the extraordinary code of honour prevailing in this fog-ridden island, he said with becoming dignity,—

      “Ah, well! if Monsieur is satisfied, I have no griefs. You mi’lor’, are our protector. If I have done wrong, I withdraw myself.”

      “Aye, do!” rejoined Blakeney, with a long sigh of satisfaction, “withdraw yourself over there. Demmed excitable little puppy,” he added under his breath, “Faith, Ffoulkes, if that’s a specimen of the goods you and your friends bring over from France, my advice to you is, drop ’em ‘mid Channel, my friend, or I shall have to see old Pitt about it, get him to clap on a prohibitive tariff, and put you in the stocks an you smuggle.”

      “La, Sir Percy, your chivalry misguides you,” said Marguerite, coquettishly, “you forget that you yourself have imported one bundle of goods from France.”

      Blakeney slowly rose to his feet, and, making a deep and elaborate bow before his wife, he said with consummate gallantry,—

      “I had the pick of the market, Madame, and my taste is unerring.”

      “More so than your chivalry, I fear,” she retorted sarcastically.

      “Odd’s life, m’dear! be reasonable! Do you think I am going to allow my body to be made a pincushion of, by every little frog-eater who don’t like the shape of your nose?”

      “Lud, Sir Percy!” laughed Lady Blakeney as she bobbed him a quaint and pretty curtsey, “you need not be afraid! ’Tis not the men who dislike the shape of my nose.”

      “Afraid