Less than three minutes later, there came to Chauvelin's expectant ears the soft sound made by a woman's skirts against the stone floor.

During those three minutes, which had seemed an eternity to his impatience, he had sat silently watching the slumber--affected or real--of his enemy.
Directly he heard the word: "Halt!" outside the door, he jumped to his feet.

The next moment Marguerite had entered the room.
Hardly had her foot crossed the threshold than Sir Percy rose, quietly and without haste but evidently fully awake, and turning towards her, made her a low obeisance.
She, poor woman, had of course caught sight of him at once.

His presence here, Chauvelin's demand for her reappearance, the soldiers in a small compact group outside the door, all these were unmistakable proofs that the awful cataclysm had at last occurred.
The Scarlet Pimpernel, Percy Blakeney, her husband, was in the hands of the Terrorists of France, and though face to face with her now, with an open window close to him, and an apparently helpless enemy under his hand, he could not--owing to the fiendish measures taken by Chauvelin--raise a finger to save himself and her.
Mercifully for her, nature--in the face of this appalling tragedy--deprived her of the full measure of her senses.

She could move and speak and see, she could hear and in a measure understand what was said, but she was really an automaton or a sleep-walker, moving and speaking mechanically and without due comprehension.
Possibly, if she had then and there fully realized all that the future meant, she would have gone mad with the horror of it all.
"Lady Blakeney," began Chauvelin after he had quickly dismissed the soldiers from the room, "when you and I parted from one another just now, I had no idea that I should so soon have the pleasure of a personal conversation with Sir Percy....