Chauvelin never noticed that she went.  He sat for a long time, silent and immovable.  Now he understood.  Thank all the Powers of Hate and Revenge, no thought of disappointment was destined to embitter the overflowing cup of his triumph.  He had not only brought his arch-enemy to his knees, but had foiled one of his audacious ventures.  How clear the whole thing was!  The false Paul Mole, the newly acquired menial in the household of Marat, had wormed himself into the confidence of his employer in order to wrest from him the secret of the aristo’s child.  Bravo! bravo! my gallant Scarlet Pimpernel!  Chauvelin now could see it all.  Tragedies such as that which had placed an aristo’s child in the power of a cunning demon like Marat were not rare these days, and Chauvelin had been fitted by nature and by temperament to understand and appreciate an execrable monster of the type of Jean Paul Marat.

And Paul Mole, the grimy, degraded servant of the indigent demagogue, the loathsome mask which hid the fastidious personality of Sir Percy Blakeney, had made a final and desperate effort to possess himself of the ring which would deliver the child into his power.  Now, having failed in his machinations, he was safe under lock and key—­guarded on sight.  The next twenty-four hours would see him unmasked, awaiting his trial and condemnation under the scathing indictment prepared by Fouquier-Tinville, the unerring Public Prosecutor.  The day after that, the tumbril and the guillotine for that execrable English spy, and the boundless sense of satisfaction that his last intrigue had aborted in such a signal and miserable manner.

Of a truth Chauvelin at this hour had every cause to be thankful, and it was with a light heart that he set out to interview the Leridans.

VIII

The Leridans, anxious, obsequious, terrified, were only too ready to obey the citizen Representative in all things.

They explained with much complacency that, even though they were personally acquainted with Jeannette Marechal, when the citizeness presented herself this very morning without the ring they had refused her permission to see the brat.

Chauvelin, who in his own mind had already reconstructed the whole tragedy of the stolen child, was satisfied that Marat could not have chosen more efficient tools for the execution of his satanic revenge than these two hideous products of revolutionary Paris.

Grasping, cowardly, and avaricious, the Leridans would lend themselves to any abomination for a sufficiency of money; but no money on earth would induce them to risk their own necks in the process.  Marat had obviously held them by threats of the guillotine.  They knew the power of the “Friend of the People,” and feared him accordingly.  Chauvelin’s scarf of office, his curt, authoritative manner, had an equally awe-inspiring effect upon the two miserable creatures.  They became absolutely abject, cringing,