CHAPTER VI.
The Scarlet Pimpernel.
It was some few hours later.

The ladies sat in the drawing-room, silent and anxious.
Soon after supper a visitor had called, and had been closeted with Paul Deroulede in the latter's study for the past two hours.
A tall, somewhat lazy-looking figure, he was sitting at a table face to face with the Citizen-Deputy.

On a chair beside him lay a heavy caped coat, covered with the dust and the splashings of a long journey, but he himself was attired in clothes that suggested the most fastidious taste, and the most perfect of tailors; he wore with apparent ease the eccentric fashion of the time, the short-waisted coat of many lapels, the double waistcoat and billows of delicate lace.

Unlike Deroulede he was of great height, with fair hair and a somewhat lazy expression in his good-natured blue eyes, and as he spoke, there was just a soupcon of foreign accent in the pronunciation of the French vowels, a certain drawl of o's and a's, that would have betrayed the Britisher to an observant ear.
The two men had been talking earnestly for some time, the tall Englishman was watching his friend keenly, whilst an amused, pleasant smile lingered round the corners of his firm mouth and jaw.

Deroulede, restless and enthusiastic, was pacing to and fro.
"But I don't understand now, how you managed to reach Paris, my dear Blakeney!" said Deroulede at last, placing an anxious hand on his friend's shoulder.