The Scarlet Pimpernel: Chapter 19 Summary & Analysis

With the Scarlet Pimpernel seal-ring still in her hand, Lady Blakeney runs out of the house and into the garden. “Bah!” she thinks to herself. “It is ridiculous!” Her husband can’t be the Scarlet Pimpernel! What does one seal-ring prove? Lady Blakeney herself owns several gowns with the red blossom embroidered on them, and she is also known to wear jewels in her hair in the shape of the small English flower. Many in England pay homage to the Scarlet Pimpernel in this way, so it is believable that Sir Percy has as well, which explains the ring.

With her thoughts in a “whirl” and “her mind a blank,” Lady Blakeney notices a young woman enter the garden. “Where are you?” Suzanne de Tournay yells to her friend. Lady Blakeney welcomes her and the two women embrace. Suzanne begins to immediately talk about France and her father, the Comte’s, upcoming escape. “Oh, we have no fear now!” Suzanne claims. “You don’t know, chérie, that that great and noble Scarlet Pimpernel himself has gone to save papa,” she continues. “He was in London this morning; he will be in Calais, perhaps, to-morrow.”

Lady Blakeney has a sudden realization and wonders how she could “have been so blind.” She understands now, “all at once,” the “part [Sir Percy] played—the mask he wore”—was nothing but a ruse to “throw dust in everybody’s eyes.” Maybe, Lady Blakeney considers, Sir Percy had intended on telling her of his identity after they married, but heard first about her involvement with the Marquis’s death. Of course, Sir Percy is the Scarlet Pimpernel! “The mask of the inane fop had been a good one,” Lady Blakeney thinks, “and the part consummately well played.”

“But what is it, chérie?” Suzanne asks, noticing Lady Blakeney’s distraction. “Are you ill, Marguerite? What is it?” Marguerite asks to be alone and Suzanne agrees and begins to walk away. As she does, Sir Percy’s groom appears and gives Lady Blakeney an envelope. She tears it open and finds Armand’s letter to Sir Andrew. The groom claims that a “runner” has just dropped it off, and the envelope had been given to him by “a gentleman” who was awaiting a coach to Dover.

Alone in the garden, Lady Blakeney curses herself for not noticing that Sir Percy is “wearing a mask.” Now, she wishes she had “torn it from his face.” Marguerite’s own love for her husband “had been paltry and weak,” and it was “easily crushed by her own pride.” She, too, has “worn a mask in assuming a contempt for him, whilst, as a matter of fact, she completely misunderstood him.”