The Scarlet Pimpernel
What does Marguerite think caused her husband to stop loving her
IN the scarlet pimpernel
IN the scarlet pimpernel
Percy believes that his wife denounced the Marquis de St. Cyr, something that killed his love for her.
‘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.’
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Blakeney was slow-witted, he would not listen to ‘circumstances,’ he only clung to facts, and these had shown him Lady Blakeney denouncing a fellow man to a tribunal that knew no pardon: and the contempt he would feel for the deed she had done, however unwittingly, would kill that same love in him, in which sympathy and intellectuality could never had a part.
The Scarlet Pimpernel