"Chauvelin!" cried Tony, suddenly roused from the dull apathy of his immeasurable grief, at sound of that name which recalled so many exciting adventures, such mad, wild, hair-breadth escapes. "Chauvelin! What in the world is he doing here in England?"
"Brewing mischief, of course," replied Blakeney dryly. "In disgrace, discredited, a marked man--what you will--my friend M. Chauvelin has still an infinite capacity for mischief. Through the interstices of a badly fastened shutter I heard two blackguards devising infinite devilry. That is why, Tony," he added, "I urged an immediate marriage as the only real protection for Yvonne de Kernogan against those blackguards."
"Would to God you had been more explicit!" exclaimed Tony with a bitter sigh.
"Would to God I had," rejoined the other, "but there was so little time, with licences and what not all to arrange for, and less than an hour to do it in. And would you have suspected the Duc himself of such execrable duplicity even if you had known, as I did then, that the so-called Martin-Roget hath name Adet, and that he matures thoughts of deadly revenge against the duc de Kernogan and his daughter?"
"Martin-Roget? the banker--the exiled royalist who...."
"He may be a banker now ... but he certainly is no royalist--he is the son of a peasant who was unjustly put to death four years ago by the duc de Kernogan."
"He came over to England plentifully supplied with money--I could not gather if the money is his or if it has been entrusted to him by the revolutionary government for purposes of spying and corruption--but he came to England in order to ingratiate himself with the duc de Kernogan and his daughter, and then to lure them back to France, for what purpose you may well imagine."
"He has chartered a smuggler's craft--or rather Chauvelin has done it for him. Her name is the _Hollandia_, her master hath name Kuyper. She was to be in Portishead harbour on the last day of November: all her papers in order. Cargo of West India sugar, destination Amsterdam, consignee some Mynheer over there. But Martin-Roget, or whatever his name may be, and no doubt our friend Chauvelin too, were to be aboard her, and also M. le duc de Kernogan and his daughter. And the _Hollandia_ is to put into Le Croisic for Nantes, whose revolutionary proconsul, that infamous Carrier, is of course Chauvelin's bosom friend."