CHAPTER VII

       THE SECRET ORCHARD

       Table of Contents

      Once outside the noisy coffee-room, alone in the dimly-lighted passage, Marguerite Blakeney seemed to breathe more freely. She heaved a deep sigh, like one who had long been oppressed with the heavy weight of constant self-control, and she allowed a few tears to fall unheeded down her cheeks.

      Outside the rain had ceased, and through the swiftly passing clouds, the pale rays of an after-storm sun shone upon the beautiful white coast of Kent and the quaint, irregular houses that clustered round the Admiralty Pier. Marguerite Blakeney stepped on to the porch and looked out to sea. Silhouetted against the ever-changing sky, a graceful schooner, with white sails set, was gently dancing in the breeze. The DAY DREAM it was, Sir Percy Blakeney's yacht, which was ready to take Armand St. Just back to France into the very midst of that seething, bloody Revolution which was overthrowing a monarchy, attacking a religion, destroying a society, in order to try and rebuild upon the ashes of tradition a new Utopia, of which a few men dreamed, but which none had the power to establish.

      In the distance two figures were approaching "The Fisherman's Rest": one, an oldish man, with a curious fringe of grey hairs round a rotund and massive chin, and who walked with that peculiar rolling gait which invariably betrays the seafaring man: the other, a young, slight figure, neatly and becomingly dressed in a dark, many caped overcoat; he was clean-shaved, and his dark hair was taken well back over a clear and noble forehead.

      "Armand!" said Marguerite Blakeney, as soon as she saw him approaching from the distance, and a happy smile shone on her sweet face, even through the tears.

      A minute or two later brother and sister were locked in each other's arms, while the old skipper stood respectfully on one side.

      "How much time have we got, Briggs?" asked Lady Blakeney, "before M. St. Just need go on board?"

      "We ought to weigh anchor before half an hour, your ladyship," replied the old man, pulling at his grey forelock.

      Linking her arm in his, Marguerite led her brother towards the cliffs.

      "Half an hour," she said, looking wistfully out to sea, "half an hour more and you'll be far from me, Armand! Oh! I can't believe that you are going, dear! These last few days — whilst Percy has been away, and I've had you all to myself, have slipped by like a dream."

      "I am not going far, sweet one," said the young man gently, "a narrow channel to cross — a few miles of road — I can soon come back."

      "Nay, 'tis not the distance, Armand — but that awful Paris . . . just now . . ."

      They had reached the edge of the cliff. The gentle sea-breeze blew Marguerite's hair about her face, and sent the ends of her soft lace fichu waving round her, like a white and supple snake. She tried to pierce the distance far away, beyond which lay the shores of France: that relentless and stern France which was exacting her pound of flesh, the blood-tax from the noblest of her sons.

      "Our own beautiful country, Marguerite," said Armand, who seemed to have divined her thoughts.

      "They are going too far, Armand," she said vehemently. "You are a republican, so am I . . . we have the same thoughts, the same enthusiasm for liberty and equality . . . but even YOU must think that they are going too far . . ."

      "Hush! — " said Armand, instinctively, as he threw a quick, apprehensive glance around him.

      "Ah! you see: you don't think yourself that it is safe even to speak of these things — here in England!" She clung to him suddenly with strong, almost motherly, passion: "Don't go, Armand!" she begged; "don't go back! What should I do if . . . if . . . if . . ."

      Her voice was choked in sobs, her eyes, tender, blue and loving, gazed appealingly at the young man, who in his turn looked steadfastly into hers.

      "You would in any case be my own brave sister," he said gently, "who would remember that, when France is in peril, it is not for her sons to turn their backs on her."

      Even as he spoke, that sweet childlike smile crept back into her face, pathetic in the extreme, for it seemed drowned in tears.

      "Oh! Armand!" she said quaintly, "I sometimes wish you had not so many lofty virtues. . . . I assure you little sins are far less dangerous and uncomfortable. But you WILL be prudent?" she added earnestly.

      "As far as possible . . . I promise you."

      "Remember, dear, I have only you . . . to . . . to care for me. . . ."

      "Nay, sweet one, you have other interests now. Percy cares for you . . ."

      A look of strange wistfulness crept into her eyes as she murmured, —

      "He did . . . once . . ."

      "But surely . . ."

      "There, there, dear, don't distress yourself on my account. Percy is very good . . ."

      "Nay!" he interrupted energetically, "I will distress myself on your account, my Margot. Listen, dear, I have not spoken of these things to you before; something always seemed to stop me when I wished to question you. But, somehow, I feel as if I could not go away and leave you now without asking you one question. . . . You need not answer it if you do not wish," he added, as he noted a sudden hard look, almost of apprehension, darting through her eyes.

      "What is it?" she asked simply.

      "Does Sir Percy Blakeney know that . . . I mean, does he know the part you played in the arrest of the Marquis de St. Cyr?"

      She laughed — a mirthless, bitter, contemptuous laugh, which was like a jarring chord in the music of her voice.

      "That I denounced the Marquis de St. Cyr, you mean, to the tribunal that ultimately sent him and all his family to the guillotine? Yes, he does know. . . . . I told him after I married him. . . ."

      "You told him all the circumstances — which so completely exonerated you from any blame?"

      "It was too late to talk of 'circumstances'; he heard the story from other sources; my confession came too tardily, it seems. I could no longer plead extenuating circumstances: I could not demean myself by trying to explain — "

      "And?"

      "And now I have the satisfaction, Armand, of knowing that the biggest fool in England has the most complete contempt for his wife."

      She spoke with vehement bitterness this time, and Armand St. Just, who loved her so dearly, felt that he had placed a somewhat clumsy finger upon an aching wound.

      "But Sir Percy loved you, Margot," he repeated gently.

      "Loved me? — Well, Armand, I thought at one time that he did, or I should not have married him. I daresay," she added, speaking very rapidly, as if she were about to lay down a heavy burden, which had oppressed her for months, "I daresay that even you thought — as everybody else did — that I married Sir Percy because of his wealth — but I assure you, dear, that it was not so. He seemed to worship me with a curious intensity of concentrated passion, which went straight to my heart. I had never loved any one before, as you know, and I was four-and-twenty then — so I naturally thought that it was not in my nature to love. But it has always seemed to me that it MUST be HEAVENLY to be loved blindly, passionately, wholly . . . worshipped, in fact — and the very fact that Percy was slow and stupid was an attraction for me, as I thought he would love me all the more. A clever man would naturally have other interests, an ambitious man other hopes. . . . I thought that a fool would worship, and think of nothing else. And I was ready to respond, Armand; I would have allowed myself to be worshipped, and given infinite tenderness in return. . . ."

      She sighed — and there was a world of disillusionment in that sigh. Armand St. Just had allowed her to speak on without