Transcriber’s Note:

Minor errors in punctuation and formatting have been silently corrected. Please see the transcriber’s [note] at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.

The full-page illustrations are referred to, in the list provided, by a quote from the text, and the page reference is to the quote, rather than the position of the illustration in the text. In some cases, these were re-positioned to fall nearer the scene referenced.

MY LADY PEGGY
GOES TO TOWN

By

FRANCES AYMAR MATHEWS

ILLUSTRATED BY HARRISON FISHER

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS : NEW YORK

Copyright, 1901,

By The Bowen-Merrill Company

THE DECORATIONS DESIGNED BY VIRGINIA KEEP

THE COVER DESIGNED BY FRANCIS HAZENPLUG

ENVOI

When gay postillions cracked their whips,

And gallants gemmed their chat with quips;

When patches nestled o’er sweet lips

At choc’late times; and, ’twixt the sips,

Fair Ladies gave their gossips tips;

Then, in Levantine gown and brooch,

My Lady Peggy took the coach,

For London Town!

In the which My Lady Peggy sends off her

lover broken-hearted and promptly

falls into a swoon.

Kennaston Castle lies in Surrey. The Earl of Exham is master of the picturesque old pile and of the estate, and decidedly the slave of the very considerable number of debts which were up to His Lordship’s ears when he came of age, some four and fifty years ago, and by this time have reached almost to the crown of his head. He is also father to his son and heir, Kennaston of Kennaston, and to the heir’s tall twin, My Lady Peggy.

My Lady Peggy at this particular moment sits a-swinging on the top branch of a plum tree at the foot of the kitchen garden whence she commands a tolerable view of the highway.

“Impertinent sun!” cries Peggy, shading her handsome eyes with her hand as she stares off along the dusty road. “How is’t you dare shine when there’s no fine gentleman a-comin’ from the east; no gallant with disheveled locks, powdered shoulders, disordered mien, distracted looks, spurs a-digging into his beast, lips apart, heart beating like spent rabbit’s, and ‘Peggy, lovely Peggy,’ the clapper to his eager tongue at every jolt of his saddle, every rut of his way? Go cloud yourself, I say! since Sir Percy tarries. I’d have the skies weep, even if I can’t.” A peal of merriest laughter concludes this sally, and an apronful of plums comes tumbling down all over the other young woman who stands under the tree in waiting on her mistress.

“Is His Lordship not yet in sight, My Lady?” asks this one.

“Nay! that is not he, Chockey, and whisk me! but when His Lordship does come, he’ll find a very sorry entertainment. I swear, as dad says, I’ll not see him when he does appear, that will not I. Nay, shake not your head, girl. Is’t not true that Lady Peggy had once a lover?”

“’Twere truer say a dozen of that sort of gentry, Madam,” replies the buxom Chockey, as she sorts the plums, the best in her bonnet, the flaws over the wall where the chickens and hens cackle to the refuse.

“Well, well, twenty if you like! but one more favored than the rest? the properest sort of man at saddle, gun, line, wrestle, toast, song, or dance? honest, straightforward, beautiful, as dad says the angels are he saw painted on the walls at Rome. Speak I truth, eh, Chockey?”

“Madam, that you do.”

“And this paragon so worshiped his Peggy as, when she went off a-three months since to visit her godmother in Kent, he vowed by all the saints in the calendar he’d scarce survive until her return. False or true, eh, Chockey?”

My Lady Peggy punctuated this query by an accurate aim and hit, on the top of her waiting woman’s head, with an especially large plum.

“True, Madam,” dodging the fruit, and still with an eye on the road.

“And then, back comes My Lady Peggy, cutting short her stay in Kent, where she had much pleasure, to tell the truth, in the society of a very fine young nobleman.”

“Lawk, Madam! another?” interrupted the faithful Chockey.

“Another, Chock,” vouchsafes her mistress. “Sweet, sweet Sir Robin McTart!”

“Oh, My Lady!” cries the girl, vainly endeavoring to conceal a smile.

“Aye, Chock,” proceeds Peggy, “I say again, a sweet and most entrapping young man.”

“Madam, a squint eye, a wry nose, an underlip that hangs, a pair of fox-teeth, and a chin that’s gone a-huntin’ for his throat!”

“Tut, tut! Chock,” laughs Lady Peggy, leaning back in her leafy bower, “what’s all that to a nimble wit, a galloping conversation, and a faithful heart?” Lady Peggy’s tone is as light as the May breeze blowing her soft locks about her lovely blooming face, full of mockery, witchery,—and then a bit of a sigh, low as flowers’ whispers, and up with her drooped head higher than before, as in the half mannish tone her twinship and long play-fellowship with her brother have given her, she adds curtly—

“D’ye see aught coming yet, Chock?”

“No, My Lady, not yet,” answers the girl ruefully.

Peggy bites her lips until they hurt.

“As I was a-sayin’, Chock, your mistress cuts short her visit, sends word to her lover she’ll be home o’-Thursday, and, as I live! to-day’s the Monday after, and him still on the way! See him!” Peggy’s white teeth close tight, and her eyes flash, and her little hands clench. “Not I! Let him come now an’ he goes again faster than he ever traveled. The vain coxcomb! the deceitful, cozening, graceless poppet! He’ll ne’er set eyes on her he used to call his Peg again, or I die for’t.” And Peggy jumped to the ground.

“Madam! Madam!” exclaims Chockey, pointing joyfully to a cloud of dust far up the highway. “Look! Yonder comes Sir Percy! Don’t I know? Ain’t I watched his long roan any day this twelve month a-turnin’ by the lodge?”

Lady Peggy seizes Chockey’s arm, and runs breathless to the house; in, a-scrambling up the broad stairs to her chamber; a-pulling out of drawers from their chests; a-hunting of ribbons and fallals, combs, brushes, kerchiefs, perfumes, patches, powder, whatever else besides!

“Hurry, Chock, do my hair as he likes it!” urges Lady Peggy.

“Lawk, Madam! I thought you swore just now you’d never set eyes on Sir Percy again?”

“You thought! Bless you, Chock, never be a-wastin’ your time a-thinking where a woman’s concerned. When her heart steps up and lays hold the reins, the steed gallops to the goal; she’s always time to think after she’s acted.”

“Yes, Madam,” concurs Chockey, with a mental reservation back of her mouthful of pins. “There, My Lady, Your Ladyship’s hair is lovely; your Levantine gown becomes you like a pheasant do its plumage, and your eyes is a-shinin’ with love and—”

“Tut, girl! It’s anger, wrath, temper,—so!” Peggy marches up and down before the mirror, tossing her lovely head. “Thus attired, Chock, a lady can flout, deride, harass, and madden one of the opposite sex, as can she not do in cotton frock and fruit-stained apron. Give me my comfit box, I pray. Tell me how long Sir Percy now hath been cooling his heels in the drawing-room?”

“But little lacking the hour, Madam.”

“Good! I’d keep him there until Thursday, an I could. Now go tell him I’ll be with him presently.”

Chockey went.

Lady Peggy stood at the door ajar; she heard the impatient footsteps of her lover below, but yet she tarried, tapping her high red heel on the sill.

“Lud!” cried she, “an I show no proper spirit, Percy’s uncle’ll have the right of it when he says of one he’s never seen yet, ‘She’s a-hunting your bank-notes, boy! She’s heiress to debts, Sir, and by my life, Sir! I’ll never father-in-law her, so long as I’m above the sod, Sir!’ Despicable old wretch! as if ’twere not Percy I adored, without a care if he have a farthing to his fortune, or a roof to his head!”

And then Chockey, her palm warm with a sovereign, came with a rush.

“My Lady!” cries she, “’f you could see Sir Percy! White as milk, tremblin’, shakin’, chatterin’, a-begging and a-praying as you’ll condescend to go to him inside of another hour!”

“White, said you Chock?”

The girl nods vehemently.

“Shaking?”

“Aye, Madam.”

“Like to faint, think you?”

“Like to die, My Lady!”

Then Lady Peggy, laughing, humming such a gay snatch of a song, comes tripping down the stairs, pulling out her petticoats, stopping her lover’s outstretched arms of eagerness with such a splendid curtsy as any Court lady might have envied.

Still laughing.—“Lud! Sir Percy! is’t you?” amazed.

“Aye!” returns he, more amazed than she, and standing off with dropped arms. “Whom did you think it was?”

“Another. My woman’s stupid, and when she described the gallant that she did, it matched a different sort of him than you, methinks. However, let’s be civil; the crops are good, the game likely to be, later; the King in health,—prithee have a chair.” And Peggy swept a second curtsy, motioning toward a seat.

“Peggy! Sweet lips! Joy of my soul, what’s it? Not one warm word for him who only lives for thee? Who’s counted every hour since he parted from you, eh?” The young man draws nearer to her, and bends upon his knee, venturing, as he does so, to take her hand in his.

“Since you spent your time a-counting the hours, Sir, pray you, how many hours have passed since in this same room we parted, now three months, three weeks, and a few days since?”

Sir Percy sprang to his feet.

“Zounds! Peggy, and you flout me so?”

“Zounds! Sir Percy, did not I write you—and very well you know writing’s not my forte,—that I’d be home o’-Thursday?”

“Aye, but I never got it until this morning; then did I put spurs and leave my uncle in the lurch to fly to you.”

“What, Sir! not get my letter? An idle, silly, and foolish excuse. I sent it by Bickers, and trustier man ne’er breathed. He vowed me he’d put it in your hands.”

“Peggy, believe whichever of the two you like; but, in mercy tell me! What kept you so long away? I’ve heard rumors of another. Eh, Peg, ’tis not true, swear me ’tis not true? Oh, by the hue of my visage must you know what jealous pangs have racked me!”

Lady Peggy nods her head maliciously.

“Jealous pangs, forsooth! and you thought to medicine them, I dare be sworn, with vaulting the country over in the wake of Lady Diana Weston, the greatest heiress in the market! Bah, Sir, and you’ve heard rumors! I’ll match ’em. I’ve seen the minx from afar. She is handsome, Sir; your taste does you credit.”

“Peg, I swear ’twas but to please my uncle!” cries Sir Percy.

“Aye, and so displease me!”

“Nay, you know too well that I’ll never do that of my will; but my uncle, as I’ve told you, must be coaxed, and then when once I gain his consent to seeing you, our battle’s won. To see thee, Peg ’s to worship thee! Lord Gower’ll kneel when he beholds thee!”

“Our me no ours, Sir!” returned Peggy. “Let’s here and now make an end on’t all. You go pound the roads after your new mistress with her acres and notes, and I—”

“Well, you what?” asks the young man impetuously and yet with a certain grave dignity.

“Oh, I’ll acquit myself to a certainty with one that’s faithful as the sun, and gallant from his head to his heels.”

“What’s his name?” inquires Sir Percy in a hard, strained voice. “If he’s a better man, Peg, and you can say you love him—God keep me!”

“His name’s a very honorable and ancient one, he’s Sir Robin McTart, twenty-third Baronet!”

“Peggy!”

If a thunderbolt had fallen betwixt Peggy’s red shoes and his brown ones, Percy could not have been more astounded.

“Well, Sir?” returns she, scarce controlling the twitching of her lips.

“A milk-sop, molly-coddle! Oh Peggy, an you drop me, take a better man! Peg, you’re a-joking. Not that bumpkin! I’ve never seen him, but report has it he’s afeard if one of his own dogs looks him in the eye and bays!”

“Sir Percy, have you finished?” inquires Peggy with dignity.

“No, have I not! By my soul, Peg, an you pitch me to hell for that jackanapes, I’ll go to hell as fast as wine and dice, and cards and brawls, and usurers, and all that sort of crew can carry me! I’ll up to London, and one morning when your brother sends you word he’s found me with a rapier stuck in my throat, my pockets empty, and ‘Peggy’ writ on the scrap o’ paper a-lying over my heart, then you’ll believe Percy loved you!”

“Lud, Sir! Men are apt at such chatter, and a fortnight after, the vicar’s a-publishing their banns with the other lady!”

“Peg!” He takes her kerchief end, as it droops away from her pretty long throat, in his fingers; he looks down deep into her eyes; his voice shakes, so does his hand.

“Whatever betides, my bonny sweetheart, there’s only one that’ll ever have banns read with me, and that’s—” He takes her by surprise and by the shoulders, and squares her to the mirror in its niche.

“Farewell, Peg—since you send me, it’s the devil and dice, for by the Lord! I can’t live a quiet life lacking your smiles.”

In two minutes more Chockey, from the upper window, saw the long roan flying away from Kennaston faster than she ever galloped to it; and went down to find her young mistress a-lying prone in a fine wrinkled heap of silken gown, lace frills and furbelows, on the threadbare carpet of the big drawing-room.

To rush across the wide hall to the dining-room, seize a game-knife, back again; cut her mistress’s stays; pour a glass of cider down Lady Peggy’s throat, willy-nilly; clap her palms; pound her back; set her on her feet; and half carry her to her chamber, occupied not many minutes for stout Chockey.

“Lawk, My Lady,” said she, surveying the prostrate form on the couch, arms a-kimbo, eyes saucer-wide, “who’d ever have thought to see your haughty Ladyship so mauled for the sake of any gentleman as lives!”

Lady Peggy lay still, but presently, from the depths of the pillows she spoke.

“I ain’t mauled, Chock, not I!” Her Ladyship now sat up and stared around the big room. “It’s only for sorrow for havin’ had to disappoint Sir Percy, on account of dear Sir Robin.”

“Oh!” ejaculates the worthy Chockey in a tone of undisguised and sarcastic disbelief.

“Chockey!” exclaimed her mistress in the tone of a drill sergeant, now rising to her feet.

“Lawk! My Lady, I didn’t mean nothin’.”

“Chockey,” echoes Lady Peggy faintly, sinking to her knees, “whatever’ll I do? Oh Chock! Chock! and Sir Percy just the centre of my heart, and me to behave to him like a brute! Out of my sight, away with you! There’s the first bell a-ringin’ for dinner. Say to daddy I’m too deep in my hand-writin’ lessons to eat to-day! Say to him I’m gone out to break the new colt and not got back. Say to him I’m gone to the devil!”

And Lady Peggy fell a-weeping with such violence as Chockey had never seen; and, being a wise damsel, she left her mistress alone and went down to soothe the gouty Earl, tied to his chair, as best she could for the absence of his daughter Peg from dinner.

II

In the which Her Ladyship wheedles her

noble father and makes up her mind.

The Earl forsooth was a testy gentleman, and his girl was his plague and his pride; on her, rather than on his heir, the old man’s fancy was set, for the reason that Kennaston, disclaiming all the country sports, the half wild outdoor life, the lusty joys and racing bumps and cups that had been vastly helpful in reducing the little his parent had started his career with, had elected instead to try his luck at that most inscrutable, vile trade of scribbling!

Peg’s twin, her fellow in height and build, which made a slender youth of him indeed, had gone up to London quill-armed, ink-fingered, brain-possessed with rhymes; empty-pursed, determined to carve with such unlikely weapons as that apt bird, the goose, furnishes, a fame and fortune for himself, that should dazzle the world and recoup the fortunes of his well-nigh fallen house.

While the Earl jeered, Peg, herself scarce able to spell a two-syllabled word, looked up to her brother as nothing short of whatever stood in her mind for Shakespeare; for, low be it spoke, the fair Peggy had small notion of books, their makers or their pleasurable usage. To her they represented waste time almost, and only as a means of communication with Kennaston did she, since his absence began, pore daily over a dictionary, a speller, and a copy-book.

So sat she now, a couple of months after the parting betwixt her and Sir Percy; lips pursed, brows knit, goose-feather in finger, poring over a blank sheet of paper first, and from it turning to the closely-writ page of a letter from her twin.

Chockey sat on a stool hard by,—they were both in the buttery, for Lady Peggy was apt with all the mysteries of housekeeping, and had as fine a churning, as big cheeses, as fat chickens, as nice eggs, as good hams as any other in the county,—had she not, the Earl, her father, had lacked something or all of his comfort. Chockey, then, sat working butter, squeezing all the white milky bubbles back and forth in the wooden bowl, and printing the pats in the trays, while her mistress sighed, swallowed, and at last burst forth in speech.

“Chockey, I shall fall into a fit, an I’ve ever another letter to write in this world. The last I writ was for Sir Robin to introduce him to Lord Kennaston when he should go up to town—and belike, I forgot to give it to him as I promised and have it safe here. It took me a week to finish, and I’ve copied all the words out of it I can, yet do I lack thousands more, methinks, to say what I would to my brother. Lud! Learning’s a wonderful thing! Look at that, Chock!”

Lady Peggy holds up the well covered pages of Kennaston’s letter before the eyes of the Abigail.

“Aye, Madam,” giggles this one, “it has the air to me of where spiders has been a-fightin’! Now, for true, My Lady, do it say words as has a meanin’?”

“Listen,” replies the mistress, reading off quite glibly, since ’tis the one hundredth time since she got it that she’s rehearsed the same to herself.

“Sweet Sister Peggy: I’d have written before but that literature pays ill until a man hath contrived by preference and patronage, the rather than by his wits, to place himself at evens with the Great and the Distinguished. So far I find Fame’s hill hard in the Climbing, but do I not complain, for there’s that spirit reigning in my breast as bids me welcome Poverty, even Starvation, lead it but to the sometime recognition of my Talents. I take up my pen not to riddle your ears with plaints, but on another matter, which is Sir Percy.”

Lady Peggy’s head droops a bit to match her voice, whilst Chockey’s bright little eyes sparkle, and she twists the yellow butter into heart shapes as she pricks her ears and sighs.

“Sir Percy,” continues My Lady Peggy, reading, “as you know came up to town, now these seven weeks agone, straight as a die to my meagre chambers, where welcome was spelled, I can assure thee, all over the bare floor, barer board, and barer master thereof,—for of a truth I love him as should I the brother I had hoped he’d be! Peg, what’s this thou’st done to the lad? Thrown him, a gallant with as big a heart as God ever made, over into the Devil’s own mire, for sake of that little tow-haired sprat, Robin McTart! with his pate full of himself and none other,—so I’ve heard say, for never set I eyes upon the blackguard from Kent! Zounds! twin! What are ye women made of? And I write to say Percy, what with carousals and brawls, and drink and fights, and all night at the gaming-table, and all day God knows where, ’s fast a-throwing himself piecemeal into the grave he’s a-digging daily for your cruel sake. Could you but see him! A ghost! Wan, with eyes full of blood-spots, and hair unkempt! Madam, there’s love for you—and love’s what ladies like. Go match him, Sister, with McTart if you can, but twin me no more ever again an you and I wear black ribbons for Percy de Bohun!”

Lady Peggy’s lip quivers; so does Chockey’s.

“Lawk, My Lady!” cries the girl, splashing tears into the butter, reckless.

“‘Black ribbons,’ Chock! ‘A ghost,’ Chock! ‘McTart,’ Chock! Lord ha’ mercy! What’s to become o’ me?” Peggy’s tears smart her eyes as she flings the goose-quill over to a cheese on the shelf, where it sticks, and one day surprises the Vicar at his supper.

“Get out of my sight!” she flings after it. “I can’t write! Who can write out her heart and soul, when it’s devilish hard even to speak it. Oh! Would I were my brother for one fine half-hour!” cries Peggy, rising and stamping up and down the stone floor of the buttery.

“An’ if you were, Madam?” asks Chockey meekly, “what then?”

“I’d swear! Yea, would I! Such a lot of splendid oaths as’d ease my mind and let me hear from my own lips what a fool’s part I’d played with my own—my adored Percy! Could I but see him! as Kennaston says.” Peggy in her progress now upsets a pan of cream, and has genuine pleasure in splashing it about over her slippers as she speaks.

“But I! What am I? A girl! swaddled in petticoats and fallals; tethered to an apron, and a besom, and a harpsichord, and a needle,—yet can I snap a rapier, fire a pistol, jump a ditch, land a fish, for my brother taught me. Still it’s girl! girl! sit by the fire and spin! dawdle! dally!” The cream now spots up as far as Peggy’s chin and flecks its dimple.

“Stop-at-home, nor stir-abroad! Smile, ogle!” each word emphasized with heel and toe.

“And—” Lady Peggy now flops back into her chair, breathless, “wait on man’s will and whims,—that, Chock, ’s what ’tis to be a woman.”

“Aye, ’tis,” assents the waiting woman. “But yet, My Lady, if I dared make bold, there’s summat Your Ladyship might do, an My Lady, Your Ladyship’s mother, came back home again from her visit to your uncle in York.”

“Out with it!” says Peggy hopelessly, folding up her attempted letter and tucking it in her reticule.

“Mayhap you could persuade, by much weeping and praying, falling into swoons and such like, that Her Ladyship would take you up to London! Once there, Sir Percy couldn’t keep his distance from you.”

Peggy looks at Chockey as if she were a vision sent from on high; then, quickly succeeding derision curls her lip.

“My Lady mother take a squealing chit like me up to town! Never! She’d say my manners weren’t fit, or my figger, or my wardrobe. Lud! Chock! Bethink thee, lass, of my gowns in London town! and me no more acquainted with the ways yonder, than our Brindle is with the family pew!”

Lady Peggy walked out into the paddock, rubbed the cream from her slippers on the turf; caressed the ponies; munched the sweet cake she had in her apron-pocket, felt the keen sweet air blow over her hot forehead, and saw, dancing ever before her mind’s eye, that insidious sweet suggestion of “going up to London.”

How did one go up to London?

In the coach: aye to be sure; and the coach left the “Mermaid” in the village every Tuesday and Thursday at five in the morning. The coach! The splendid coach, a-swinging on its springs like a gigantic cradle; the postillions a-snapping their whips, the coachman a-cracking his long lash and a-shouting “All h’up for London!” and the ladies and gentlemen—well armed, these last, in dread of the highwaymen on the heath—all a-piling in and a-settling themselves; and the guards a-tooting their horns, the landlady and the boots and the maids and the hostlers all a-bowing and a-scraping and—off they go! for London town—where Percy was a-pining and a-dying for her, so her twin writ in his letter.

Well, Lady Peggy went in, clapt on a fresh gown and shoes, and never was daughter more tender and patient with crabbed, gouty, crusty dad than she all through that lovely day. Playing backgammon; spelling out the newspaper; trouncing the cat when it jumped on His Lordship’s leg; blowing the fire; wheeling his chair from hither to yon; stroking the bald head; combing the white whiskers; and finally said she,

“Daddy, London’s a very big sort of a place, now, isn’t it?”

The Earl nods, coddling his leg into the slip of sunshine that’s walking westerly away from him.

“My brother lodges, so he says, at the corner of Holywell Road and Lark Lane; tell me, dad, where should that be now?” Lady Peggy has a careless air, and flecks a buzzing fly out of His Lordship’s bowl of porridge.

“Eh?” pursues she, “is’t for instance, in the city, or nigh London Bridge, or where the quality lives, or toward Southwark, or where?”

“Rot me!” cries His Lordship, looking up at his daughter in surprise, “what’s my poppet got into her pretty head now, forsooth? Tut, tut, girl, what’s town to thee, or its bearings? hey? stick thy eye into thy churn an’ keep thy hand on the dasher,—’twere better’n all the shops in Piccadilly, or all the fops at Court.”

“Slow, dad! I was only askin’ of my twin’s whereabouts. Shops and fops are not dizzyin’ your Peggy, you may swear; ’tis my brother, Sir, of whom I’d learn!”

“’Twere better chase the scoundrel out’n my head, Peg, than hammer him in! A lad with every chance here in the county to raise his house, and make a good match with a nice plump girl, havin’ land joining his own; but no! Up and off to town to starve and scratch!”

The Earl pommels the floor with his stick, causing the cat to leap into the air.

“Let him die in want! Let him freeze, thirst, come to the gallows, say I! For such as leaves plenty to pursue want, gets no sympathy from me!”

“He ain’t begged for’t yet, dad,” says Peggy very mildly. “All I was a-wonderin’ was this: When my brother took the coach at the Mermaid that mornin’ you mind? how far off the inn where he alighted was the lodgin’ at the corner of Holywell Road and Lark Lane?—eh, dad? Surely”—and here Lady Peggy knelt and stroked his lordship’s gouty member, and her voice positively trembled, doubtless with excess of filial zeal and devotion.

“Surely,” resumed she, “you, who were, I dare be sworn”—such arch eyes as Lady Peggy now made!—“a fine gallant not so many years ago, must remember that,—don’t you?”

“Let’s see, let’s see,” responds His Lordship, rubbing his head. “They set ye down at the King’s Arms, nigh the Bridge, Southwark Bridge, yes; Well! Damme! I ought to know! Lark Lane? A devil of a hole; why, girl! it’s not a quarter hour’s trot from the inn, but it’s a beastly environment. Gad! that son of mine chooses pens, ink and writing-paper there, rather than—”

“Lady Belinda here, weight fourteen stone; acres two thousand; guineas, countless; temper, amazin’; years, untold! ha! ha! ha! Oh, daddy!” Lady Peggy springs up and dances about a minute in most genuine gaiety, then she seizes her father’s head between her palms and hugs and kisses him with much grateful warmth; then flops down a-coddling of the gout again; laughing, giggling, pinching puss, and saying,—

“Daddy, drop London! Care I no more for’t. Know I quite enough. Let’s chat of aught else in the world, until you fall a-napping, which will be soon now, guessing by the shadows.”

’Twas very soon.

Then Lady Peggy tiptoed off to her chamber; then she pulled the rope that rang in the kitchen, and presently Chockey came, chopper and bowl in hand, checkered apron over white one; for serving maids were scarce in Kennaston Hall, footmen there were none; butler there was when he was not doing t’other half his duty at the stables.

“Come hither, Chockey,” says her mistress in a whisper, with a beckon. “Shut the door; go on with choppin’ your leeks and carrots, cook’ll want ’em for the soup,—but listen, Chock; unlock your ears Jane Chockey, as never you did before in your life.”

Chockey bobs as she chops, leaning against the headpost, for support of her occupation, and also of her curiosity.

“You know my mother’s box, the small one that was re-covered last spring with the skin of the red calf that died natural? Bickers put it on with a gross of brass nails?”

Chockey again bobs.

“Put into it,” continues Lady Peggy, “a change of linen for yourself and me, two night-rails,” Chockey’s eyes dilate, “my gray taffeta gown with the flowered petticoat, my green hood and kerchief; powder, patch-box, lavender, musk, pins, needles; my red silken hose; your Sunday cap and sleeves”—Chockey’s chopper ceases to work, and the bed-post creaks. “All of which,” continues her mistress, “is but prelude to saying: ‘I’m going up to London by to-morrow’s coach, and I’m takin’ you with me!’”

“Madam!” Down goes the bowl, leeks, carrots, chopper and all a-spilling over the floor.

“Aye,” says Peggy calmly, “gather up thy mess, Chock, and to work with the duds. Lay out my Levantine gown, my blue kerchief, my black silk hose, my brown cloak; and, from my mother’s press, take the thick fall of Brussels lace and the brown bonnet it’s tied to, and bring ’em hither; put them under the bed beside thy trundle so’s my father’ll not see ’em when he stops to bid me good-night. Borrow cook’s hat she bought at the Fair when she was young, and her delaine veil for thyself; for, so appareled as not to be recognized, will you, dear Chock, and my Lady Peggy take the coach on April the twelfth. But, Chock, remember, mum’s the word, an you let your tongue wag to my undoing, but the thousandth part of a syllable, your mistress and you part company forever! Go.”

Chockey picked up Lady Peggy’s waving hand between a pinch of her apron, lest her onion-smelling fingers should foul so dainty a morsel, kissed it, and off and obeyed, speechless from surprise and veneration, both.

At night’s fall,—the Earl, somnolent again from fire’s warmth and the port he would take, despite the surgeon’s orders to the contrary,—Lady Peggy, Chockey in her wake, purse in hand, went scouting through the kitchen-garden, the paddocks, the cowyard to the stable where Bickers’s pipe shone in the gloaming like a fire-gem as he dodged and lurched after a refractory colt.

Bickers, albeit sometimes the slave of beer, was all times Lady Peggy’s abject, and it took no effort nor persuasion to gain him to her will. He took his orders amiably,—they were to secure two places in the London mail for to-morrow morning, and strictly to hold his peace both now and forever about the whole concern.

Peggy gave him the price of the seats and with wise Castle-mistress foresight, she showed Bickers a sovereign beside.

“And Bickers,” said Lady Peggy, “considering that the devil walks abroad often in the Mermaid’s tap-room, I am told, I’ll keep the sovereign for you ’til you come back, lest he rob you of it, eh?”

“Well, My Lady,” said Bickers; “a whole sovereign, My Lady, ain’t often seen out of the quality’s pockets, and the devil might think I’d stole it, My Lady, and try to get it from me. Keep it, My Lady, keep it!”

With which the old man, having conquered the colt, set off for the village by a side-path all too well known to his tread. Presently by the spark in his pipe-bowl the two women saw that he had turned back; that, as he came close to them, he clapped his thumb over the glow, and,

“My Lady Peggy,” mumbled he sheepishly.

“Whatever is’t, Bickers?” cries his mistress in alarm.

“Naught to fright ye, My Lady, only it’s been on my mind these many days to tell you as the letter you sent me with to Sir Percy de Bohun—”

“Well, well?” Lady Peggy’s words came with a gasp, as the old man dead stops.

“Go on Bickers, I say!” the mistress’s foot stamps with a thud on the damp earth.

“Askin’ Your Ladyship’s parding, the devil caught me that time at the Kennaston Arms, My Lady, and he clawed that tight, My Lady, that I couldn’t stir, and—and—”

Peggy now stooped, seized a billet of wood as big as her arm and gave Bickers a sound drub across his hands. The pipe fell in bits, the ash glowed; Bickers jumped, so did Chockey.

“‘And, and’ what?” drubbed Peggy with a will. “Not so much as ha’ penny of the sovereign, unless you out with the whole truth!”

“I will! I will!” cried the old man. “Sir Percy never got the letter, My Lady, until the very day I seen him on the long roan a-ridin’ for’s life away from the Castle yonder,” and Bickers jerked his thumb toward the house as he now made off.

The devil did not catch Bickers that night; he earned his sovereign before the moon rose.

As he sped, Lady Peggy took Chockey’s proffered arm.

“You see, Chock, you see, how we that are born to wear petticoats are no better’n puppets! a-dancin’ and a-cryin’; or a-kneelin’ and a-weepin’, as it happens to suit the whim of what, Chock? Who, Chock? Tell me, Chock!” cries Lady Peggy excitedly.

“Lawk, My Lady, that can I not!”

“A man, Chock, a man! it’s a him that pulls the strings, girl, and all we’ve to do is to simper and jerk this way, that way. To think,” here Peggy’s voice falters, for they’ve gained the house and are clambering the back stairs in the dark. “To think that Bickers, Bickers! should ha’ made me treat my worshiped Percy like a hog! Yes, Chockey, like a hog! even that name ain’t vile enough for me. But, oh, an I reach London in safety, and gain my brother’s chambers, and learn from him that ’tis for very love of me Sir Percy’s canterin’ to perdition, then, Chock, Lady Peggy’ll know how to spell paradise for him she’s riskin’ much to hear the truth about.”

“But, My Lady,” ventures Chockey, who, notwithstanding the blissful prospect of seeing London, still had a practical eye toward the dangers that beset the path, both thereto, and once there.

“But, My Lady, supposin’ we can’t find Lord Kennaston’s lodgin’s; supposin’ he’s away from home when we get there; or, a-havin’ a party, or ain’t got no place for us to sleep; or suppose—”

“Suppose me no supposes, Chock!” Lady Peggy shakes out the Levantine gown from its wrinkles. “If London were the black pit, and an army of Satans a-sittin’ grinnin’ around the brim, still would I go and find out for myself if it’s for me he pines—or, if Lady Diana Weston is up in London too!” With which Her Ladyship gives the petticoat, she takes from its peg against the morrow, a somewhat emphatic, not to say malicious shake.

III

Wherein is recounted how Her Ladyship set

forth, accompanied by her faithful

woman, for London Town.

Whoever knows the rare delights of an English dawn nowadays can figure for himself, to the letter, how ’twas when Lady Peggy and Chockey, after a make-haste toilet in the dark, slipped out into the sweetness that long-ago spring morning. The mists were rolling and creeping slowly back and over from the river-meadows; the brawl of the stream tinkled in their ears; the scents of the flower-garden next the court-yard of the Castle, came potently, lured by the flush that by now was tingeing all the pallid east with rose; the yellow moon hung low to her setting, and two stars for handmaidens still shone, of all her million troupe, at either side the disk; yonder, the steeple of the church pricked up to heaven; hither, the oaks, greening to their full leafage; there a brown rabbit scurried across the road; here the rooks hopped and ha-ha-ed to their fellows. Else, ’twas all a-hush with that recurring fond expectancy of hope, with which every day of every year so waits and wonders for “to-morrow” to be born.

Lady Peggy took the lead, kirtle high upheld, shoes soon bedrabbled in the dust and dew. Chockey, bearing the newly-covered box in her stout arms, followed close at heel. Both women, veiled double, and being wholly unused to such matters, sighting the path much the worse for the covering; in fact Peggy stumbled along like some old crone, and yet laughed under her breath merrily back at floundering Chockey.

“Hist! Chock, had I now but brought dad’s cane and snuff-box, I must sure be taken for some three-score dame come yawning out of bed before her hour, to overtake, mayhap, a recreant grandson! Zounds! as my twin’d say, were he here,” and hauling at the mischievous Brussels veil, down flopped Her Ladyship, on her knees betwixt two villainous ruts.

“Oh, My Lady!” moaned the waiting-woman panting under cook’s delaine and the calf-skin box. “Lord ha’ mercy! an this be the way to London. I’d liefer be sittin’ in the kitchen chimney a-blessin’ my porridge and spoonin’ of’t, than this!” assisting her mistress to her feet.

“Fie upon thee, Chock! Remember you’re waiting-woman now to a lady of fashion, to wit myself, and well used to journeys up to town in coaches every season! Lud!” Here Peggy stood in a puddle to take breath. “I wonder if we’ll ever pass muster at the inn; and yet I’m sure, landlord, or dame, or hostler’d never think o’ me.”

“Haste, Madam,” returns Chockey, “for do not forget the coach starts at five on the stroke, and we’ve still the quarter-mile to go.”

So on they went. My Lady Peggy unable to restrain, from time to time, however, the keen relishful overflow of her spirits. When one’s young and not ailing, a new day whips the blood and brain to such a pinnacle of unquestioning gladness as breaks bonds, be they never so weighty, and, pro tem., sweet few-years comrades him with the happiness of earth and air and sky.

But once the curl of cheerful smoke from the “Mermaid” chimney full in view above the oak-tops, My Lady sobered much, and, clutching Chockey’s arm, both fell a-trembling; stood stock-still, and stared into each other’s eyes, as lace and wool would let.

“Lady Peggy,” cries Chockey, “an it please Your Ladyship,” with tell-tale gasps of throat, “let’s go back home!”

“Jane Chockey!” answered her mistress, only needing this spur to set her a-panting the more to her purpose, “we’ll go on.”

And on they went. Peggy with a measured tread; Chockey plodding after. Into the inn-yard, where even now the great coach with its four bays waited the signal to start.

The passengers were piling on; and, atop already, quipped a trio of college lads in beavers. There stood mine host and hostess, maids, men, boys, cooks, and scullions; tips were tossed, baggage packed in the boot; farewells spoken; candles held high, lashes cracked; prancing, pawing; a rattle, a door-bang, curtsies, bows,—

“All h’up for the London mail!” shouted the coachman merrily.

And Lady Peggy and her woman, neatly sandwiched between a fat, fussy dowager and a swearing, tearing old gentleman who together absorbed the most of the vehicle and all the attention of their fellow passengers, found themselves on the road to town.

No one paid the least heed to them, save that, at the stops, the guard came civilly to ask Chockey if her mistress required any refreshment, to the which Chockey, well prepared, always answered “no”; since, to raise their veils might betray their identity. So ’twas in hunger, silence and oblivion that the momentous journey was taken.

When they crossed the heath, the testy old gentleman did turn toward Peggy, thereby flattening her the more, and, pulling out a brace of pistols, said:

“Have no fears, Madam, I’ve traveled this road these sixty years, probably you have yourself”—thus paying tribute to Peggy’s now trembling agitation, which he pleasantly mistook for age.

“And the damned rascals, Madam, know better’n to attack the coach when I’m aboard. You’re not in fear?” now bending a pair of sharp old eyes on the Brussels lace.

Lady Peggy, smothering her laughter, and recalling how often, half-a-score years ago, she’s sat on this old gentleman’s knee (he was a friend of her father’s), puts hand to ear, and nudges Chockey behind the broad back of the dowager.

The old gentleman nods comprehendingly, turns square to Chockey, and says “deaf?”

And Chockey, divided between terror and mirth, nods back again.

Without other incident, the journey up to the great city is accomplished, and, by three in the afternoon, up pull the four horses before the door of the King’s Arms in the Strand, and Lady Peggy, and her woman, and her box, are set down in the yard, amid the din and bustle incident always to the arrival of travelers.

Not much attention is bestowed on them. A couple of unpretending appearing women, evidently not persons of quality, as the meek little calf-skin box is their sole belonging; coming up to London too without even one man-servant,—bespeak but little consideration in the throng of ladies of fashion, gallants over their coffee, courtiers popping in for the news, sparks intent on ogling a pretty face or noting a trim ankle, that much o’er crowded the yard, ordinary and parlor of the King’s Arms.

Just here once, for an instant, Lady Peggy’s brave heart failed her; most, when she espied at the door, just getting into her silken-curtained chair, a lady, so young and beautiful, so richly girt, so spick and span, with such wonderful patches and such snowy powdered locks, such sparkling eyes, such begemmed fingers glistening through her mitts,—and knew at once that Lady Diana Weston was indeed “in town”!

She faltered a bit, indeed sank down on the box which Chockey had set in a corner of the yard, and, for a brief moment, both mistress and maid bedewed their masking falls with a few splashing tears.

Then spoke Lady Peggy, rising and plucking up her spirits,—“Chock,” said she, “beckon me a boy from yonder group; inquire the path to the corner of Holywell Road and Lark Lane; order him shoulder the box and lead the way. Speak with a swagger, Chock; knock the drops out of your lashes with a laugh, girl! Let ’em think we’re old hands at the town and used to bein’ waited upon!” Lady Peggy straightened herself in her grimy shoes, and gave the Levantine a twitch which she hoped was quite the mode.

Meantime Chockey did her mistress’s bidding, and in less time than it takes to set it down, the two were following the lad, in and out of such a net and mazework of streets and lanes as set their heads a-whirling; now they wheeled around this bend, now across that alley,—foul-smelling as a ditch or a dirty dog; anon up a broader way where knockers shone and chairs waited at the curb; then a cut down here, and at last this was Holywell Road and yonder the opening of Lark Lane.

Well, to be sure, ’twas a sorry spot. As Lady Peggy paid the boy and stood on the step, she ruefully surveyed the environment; the wig-maker’s opposite, with a wig in the window, she half-laughingly noted, the very yellow counterpart of Sir Robin McTart’s round pate; a dingy chocolate-house at t’other end of the row of dark, timbered, nodding houses; and this one of the stretch, taller, grimier even than its forlorn neighbors, was where poor scribbling Kennaston hunted that jade called Fame!

At double-knock, came hobbling the charwoman, loath to be disturbed at her twilight pipe, but brisking at sight of Lady Peggy’s now uncovered face and shilling between fingers.

“Yes, indeed, here His Lordship lodged and ate; was His Lordship at ’ome? Nay, that was he not! but surely might be before cock-crow to-morrow! His Lordship’s sister! Lawk! Would Her Ladyship and Her Ladyship’s woman condescend to come in and mount? What a beautiful surprise for ’is young Lordship when he did get ’ome to be sure! No, he ’adn’t gone out alone, a gay spark, a gentleman of the first quality ’ad come, as often ’e did, and fetched h’off His Lordship with ’im, last night; ’is name? Was it Sir Robin McTart peradventure? No, no, that was a name she ’ad never ’eard! ’Twas no Duke nor Earl neither, but a—Sir, Sir—?”

And as the old woman and Chockey, carrying the calf-skin box between them, reached the last landing and set their burden down in thankfulness, Lady Peggy, feeling the way, said:

“Sir Percy de Bohun, perchance? Methinks my brother has a companion by some such title!”

“Aye, that’s ’im! Ah, My Lady, as splendid a gentleman as ever sang ‘God save the King!’ free with ’is sovereigns, My Lady, as trees is with their nuts; and, to match ’im for oaths! there’s not that Prince o’ the blood as can swear so beautiful when ’e’s dead drunk. These is ‘is Lordship’s your brother’s chambers, My Lady!” throwing open the door and ushering Peggy and her servitor into as dingy, dirty, empty, sad, bare, and unkempt an appearing place as ever mortal and intrepid lady set two tired feet within.

But Lady Peggy, for the nonce, was only eager on one point.

“Drunk, say you, dame? and wherefore should so generous a young gentleman be a-gallopin‘ that silly road, eh?”

“Lawk! Your Ladyship! ‘ow should I know? but His Lordship’s own gentleman, My Lady, what ‘olds ‘im up and steadies His Lordship in ‘is cups, do say”—the old charwoman, whisking the dust of ages from a wooden chair, sets it for Lady Peggy and bends to tidy the hearth and gather together the few shingles and faggots strewn about.

“‘Say’ what?” urges Peggy, with eager eyes and a sixpence shining in her hand (another shilling’s more than she dare hazard of her slender store).

“Do say, My Lady,—God bless Your Ladyship’s sweet face! as it’s h’all on account of a young lady!”

Lady Peggy’s eyes sparkle and all at once the smoky room seems cheerful, and the tardy blaze in the fire-place glows and thaws her chilled bones and blood.

“Ah?” she says, smiling.

“Yes, My Lady, a splendid young lady of fashion, an heiress, a beauty, with half London a-danglin’ after ’er; and ’er that ’aughty, as if she was of the royal family, and ’im a-killin’ ’imself for ’er sake!”

And back again slide Kennaston’s chambers into their original depravity of dirt and dreariness; and down goes the charwoman to her pipe; and Lady Peggy on the wooden chair, Chockey on the box, spread their fingers to the reluctant warmth and are silent; while the clock ticks on the mantel-shelf; while the slit of blue that peers in at the window, grays; while the noises that are all new to these two, come rasping, roaring, shouting up to them through the broken pane—the dizzying, multitudinous, incoherent surge of London town, as it first smites ears not yet wonted to its fascination or its meaning—merely lonely, forlorn, dispirited new-comers who have not yet learned the passion and the melody that lie hidden in its Babel.

The waiting-woman is the first to move; with the homely excellent instincts of her class, she rises, and, after a slow glance around the place, falls “a-reddin’ of it up” as she mentally designated her attempt. She seized the stumpy broom from its corner and swept the floor, brushed the maze of cobwebs from ceiling and walls; beat the mats; wiped the stools and table, the broad window-sills and the shelves; shook out the dingy, ink-stained cloth; straightened the litter of books and papers, quills and horns; and finally went a-peering into the cupboards. A grimy coffee-pot and a well-matching kettle were fished out and rubbed; the kettle filled with water from the tubfull on the landing and straightway hung upon the crane; plates and cups and saucers and spoons brought forth; a paper of coffee, a jug of milk and a bottle of sugar discovered, and presently Chockey handed her mistress a cup of steaming mocha and modestly poured one for herself.

“Oh, Chock!” cries Lady Peggy, setting down the empty cup. “What a fool was I to come! What am I, forsooth, in all this great desert but a grain of sand! And Percy, not,” Lady Peggy stamps her muddy red-heeled shoe fiercely, “a-dyin’ for me in the least! and my twin a-livin’ in such a hole! wherever does he sleep, Chock?” Surveying the barn-like apartment in disgust and dismay, her gaze finally arrested by a ladder slanting in the darkest corner and reaching up to an opening in the ceiling.

“Up there, I dare be sworn! Lud! If this ’tis to be an author,” flouts Peggy, “God ha’ mercy on ’em! I tell you what, Chock. I’ll tarry a little, have a word with Kennaston; then we’ll back, girl, whence we came, quick; I’ll send word to Sir Robin McTart, and then let weddin’-bells ring as soon as ever he sees fit. No more o’ love for me, Chock. I’m done with it forever in this world; I’ll take marriage instead!”

Chockey shakes her head ruefully as her mistress, more to emphasize her latest resolve than from any other motive, flings wide open the cracked doors of the clothes-press next the chimney-piece and gives a tempestuous shake-out to the garments a-hanging on the pegs.

“Lud! look! Kennaston’s suit of gray velvets, not much the worse for wear! Small need has the poor lad for fine clothes, I warrant ye; most like a-keepin’ of ’em for pawn-shop use and bread and butter! Chock, unlock the box, and get out the waistcoat I broidered for my twin, at much expense of temper, against his birthday. So! Smooth it out! it’s brave, eh, Chock? Fit for Court, I should fancy, and, that’s right, the laced cravat! poor duck, I do misdoubt me, if he’s seen a frill on his wrist since quittin’ home! There!”

Lady Peggy surveys the gifts she’s brought, as Chockey takes them out.

“Lawk, Madam, ’twere better, were’t not, I bundle all Your Ladyship’s duds and mine up yonder against His Lordship’s comin’?”

“Right, Chock! up with ’em, and I’ll steady the road while you climb!” Suiting action to word, as Chockey, bearing the calf-skin box, cautiously mounts the rickety ladder.

“What’s it like, Chock?”

“Nothin’ I ever seed afore, My Lady; dark, stuffy; a mattress a-sprawlin’ on the bare boards, and a pair of torn quilts, and a piller no bigger’n my fist, that’s all!”

“Enough, Chock; you and I can sleep our one night in London there as soundly,” Lady Peggy’s proud lip quivers, “as I could on down or ’twixt my mother’s best lamb’s wool! Come down, Chock, by the fire; and list, to-morrow, at first crow, we’ll back to Kennaston. We’ll ’a’ been up to town, Chock! and, savin’ my twin, never will Lady Peggy look again on face of any man who now treads London street. I swear!”

“Hark, Madam!”

Chockey jumps from the ladder, eyes a-popping, while the hubbub in the street below cuts short her mistress’s valiant speech. Such a hullaballoo; such a shouting, echoing from one end of the precinct to t’other, as speeds mistress and maid both to the window, a-craning their necks far out; as sends the charwoman from her ingle-nook under ground, a-hobbling up the steep four flights.

IV

In the which is rehearsed how Her Ladyship

did nimbly slip into man’s

attire and estate.

Through the fast gathering mist, through the smoke that’s London’s own, the two women leaning behold a gay company of gallants rounding the far corner, two hundred feet away; linked arms, swords a-touching, heels a-clattering; one voice high and young, uplifted in a lilt like this: Lady Peggy had heard that voice before.

In years to come when gallants sing,

In praise of ladies fair,

All will allow, I pledge you square,

That brighter eyes n’er banished care,

Than those that bade us do and dare,

When George the Third was King!

Let roof and rafter chime and ring,

Let echo shout it back: we sing

The merry days, My Lords and Sirs!

When George the Third is King!

And at the chorus, a brave dozen more of pairs of lusty lungs to take it up and urge it on with flashing rapiers, knocking points, in the flare of the lights from the coffee-house at hand; and good twelve of plumed hats a-tossing in the air, and catch-again; and laughter loud and long, then dying down as that fresh sweet voice begins its second verse, and just so the old charwoman knocks hastily at the door, calling in Lady Peggy’s head and Chockey’s from the open.

“’H’askin’ Your Ladyship’s parding,” says she, “but I thought it no more’n my duty to acquaint Your Ladyship, as can’t see from this ’eight, that Your Ladyship’s brother, Lord Kennaston’s a-comin’ ’ome, and a-bringin’ with ’im ’is comrades, among ’em, Sir Percy de Bohun, and mayhap ’er Ladyship’d like best,”—now addressing Chockey, as Lady Peggy paced the floor in a too-evident agitation—“like best,” continued the dame, “to ’ide ’erself, and h’if so, the noble gentlemen h’all of ’em, I’m thinkin’, bein’ summat raised with wine, my ’umble bit of a place h’is h’at Her Ladyship’s service for the night or as long as Her Ladyship sees fit, for I am this minute sent for to go down into the country immediate, where, God help us all! my tenth daughter what’s married to her second husband lies at death’s door!”

And all the while the old charwoman is speaking between her bits of broken teeth, Peggy hears that other voice uplifted, ringing, gay, glad, care-free, as it seems to her strained ears, up and down the darkening little street, tapping at the window-panes, tapping at her heart-strings and stretching them to such a tension of anger, outraged pride, and wounded affection as never Lady suffered before.

She thanks the old woman and hastily dismisses her; then facing about from the window whence she has been able to descry the merry group making a rush into the coffee-house, Her Ladyship, seized by a sudden mad impulse, says to her woman:

“Chock, take my purse, tumble as fast as your two legs can carry you down, out, across to the wigmaker’s we laughed at when we came in, buy me the yellow wig, Chock, that adorns the front, an’ come not back without it, an you love me, Chock; wheedle, coax, promise more’n there is here,” sticking the purse in the astounded woman’s hand, “but get me the wig that is the very double of dear Sir Robin’s own sweet pate!” She pushes Chockey out on the landing with an impetus that sends her well on her errand, and then, shutting and buttoning the door, Lady Peggy gets herself out of her furbelows and petticoats, her stays, her bodice, her collar, brooch, kerchief, pocket, hoop and hair pins, and into her brother’s suit of grays, the new waistcoat and cravat she’s brought him for a gift; she tips the coffee-pot and washes her face and pretty throat and hands in the brown liquid; she plaits her long hair and winds it close and tight about her head; she buckles on Kennaston’s Court-rapier, she fetches his gray plumed hat with its paste buckle from the press; she ogles herself in the six-inch mirror; she swaggers, swings, struts; and, says she, dipping her finger in the soot of the old chimney and marking out two black beetling brows over her own slender ones,—

“An I know not how to play at being Sir Robin, Lady Peggy’s chosen sweetheart, boldly and with a loud voice; know not how to swear and prance and pick a pretty quarrel, crying ‘Match me your Lady Diana with my Lady Peggy!’ then never did I dozen times for sport don my twin’s breeches and coat and masquerade at being that sweet creature,—a man! Ha! I have it all at fingers’ ends!” cries Peggy, fumbling in her discarded pocket. “Here’s the very letter I writ for Sir Robin to take and present to my brother. ’Twill stand me in good stead to-night that I forgot to give it to him. If Chockey but succeed in cajoling the man out of his wig, an’ if the gallants come not ere I can fit it to my head!”—opening the door impetuously almost to bump against the returning Chockey’s nose.

“Thou hast it! Oh Chock! ’Tis I! be not afraid. Come in; adjust it to my poll,—so! Lose not a moment; pick up my petticoats, leave not a scrap that bespeaks a woman; there! You’re dropping a hair-pin; now, up with ye to the loft! an’ no matter if rats nibble your toes, Chock, or mice come play bo-peep with your eye-winkers, or spiders weave across your mouth, an you stir, cry out, move an inch to the creaking of a board, I’ll leave you here your lone self to shift as best you may! Up girl!” touching the speechless Chockey with the rapier-tip urgingly, “and ’tis Sir Robin McTart that bids you!”

The obedient and trembling waiting-woman was not much sooner out of sight in the loft, than again the voice echoed up to where Lady Peggy stood in the gruesome ambush of the landing, well back in the darkest corner behind a pile of boards and débris, bricks and dust, and what-not-else tumbled there from the chimney during the last and many previous storms.

Nearer came the song, then the chorus, broken now with more of chat and laughter; the footsteps sound upon the street, the house-door opens, slams, and up they troop, stumbling in the blackness but knowing well the way, it seems; merry, jocund, up, up, with the refrain of the song still lingering amid their talk in snatches, until they gain the top.

“Are we then indeed at your door, Kennaston?” cries the first to reach, as he feels at the latch.

“Split me, Escombe, you’re there if you can go no farther. Egad! Sirs,” cries the young host, “an I never reach to pinnacle of Fame’s ladder, at the least do I lodge as high as I could get:—a roof that suits my empty purse!”

“Nay, Kennaston.” Peggy, in her man’s gear, trembles at sound of that tone, for ’tis Percy who speaks now, whiles they all push pell-mell into her twin’s chambers, strike lights, pull out candles from cupboard, stir the fire.

“Nay, Kennaston,” says this one, “while De Bohun lives there’s ever a full purse lad, t’ exchange for thy empty one,—and well thou know’st it.”

“Tut, tut!” answers the young man of letters, adding as he glances about, “’pon my soul, gentlemen, my Hebe has been outdoing herself. Saw we ever before in this room, stools lacking dust? floor, riff-raff? walls their festoons? hearth its ashes? coffee-pot its rust? and, by my life, the kettle filled and steaming!”

A peal of mirth greets this nimble sally, as the host pulls from the table drawer a pack of cards and his guests from their pockets a dozen bottles of Falernian.

“Dead broke, am I, My Lords and Gentlemen,” says he, “but here’s the whole Court and the deuce,” flinging the pack in the midst of his guests, “play away an ye’ve a shilling left amongst ye. Let it be Commerce or Hazard; I’ll hold the counters; fill the glasses, as long as there’s a drop to pour; keep a lookout for sharpers,” laughing, “and thank God I’ve even a garret wherein to welcome men of vogue like yourselves!”

A burst of applause follows this; plumed hats are tossed aside, wrist-frills upturned; His Grace of Escombe is shuffling the pack; Sir Percy stands with his back to the fire, coat-skirts held from the cheerful blaze he’s made; stools are drawn up; the host takes his silk kerchief from his throat and polishes the mugs. Chockey has her eye glued to a chink in the cover that divides her loft from the scene of revelry below;—when, a bold knock sounds at the door, and the master with a cheery:

“Come along!” throws wide the portal.

The fine gentleman who stands before him makes a profound bow, to which he responds with one not less magnificent.

“Allow me, Lord Kennaston of Kennaston, since it is, I am persuaded, the brother of Lady Peggy Burgoyne whom I have the pleasure of addressing—?” and at her name, Sir Percy lets his brocaded skirts flop and starts forward eagerly—“of addressing, to present to you this note in the hand-writing of Your Lordship’s adorable sister, the which she gave me, wherewith to present and commend me to Your Lordship’s good offices while I am up in town!”

Another salaam given and returned, while Kennaston, with grace, ushers his new acquaintance in, sets him a stool, all the while eye quick-perusing Lady Peggy’s scrawl.

“Gentlemen!” says their host, “allow me to introduce to you, and, Sir, these gentlemen to you, Sir Robin McTart of Robinswold, Kent, His Grace of Escombe, Sir Percy de Bohun, the Honorable Jack Chalmers, Sir Wyatt Lovell,” etc., etc., etc. The which ceremony being concluded amid many bows and all due forms of mutual delight, the new-comer was cordially invited to take a hand in the game.

Now, as true ’twas that Lady Peggy had never been in a coach until the morning to which this was evening, so true was it that Her Ladyship had not a farthing to her pocket left, and although a good gamester’s daughter, she hesitated, making pretense of hanging her hat and of settling to its proper place her rapier, and pinching her ruffles. While she did so, the rest chatting, Sir Percy crossed the room, and, in a tone that was not heard save by the one he addressed, said to Kennaston:

“As I live, Sir, now’s my chance; I’ll pick a quarrel with this jackanapes that’s dared to oust me from Peggy’s heart. Aye, will I! the sooner the better; blood’ll spill, Kennaston, or ever that puppet and I are thirty minutes older! Mark me! Your sister shall know and hear I’m willing to die for her sake, or—to kill!”

Peggy, meantime, in this second, got her courage well screwed up, and, with a laugh, fitly disguising her voice, said she, seating herself with her legs well under the table—for, at this particular juncture, Her Ladyship, looking down, had beheld with dismay the womanish and forgotten fashion of her shoes.

“Rot me! Gentlemen, your humble servant’s fresh from Will’s, where, ’pon my life! such an apt company of wits and beaux encountered I, as swept my pockets clean and left me not the jingle of a shilling wherewith to bless myself. Your Grace, My Lords, Sirs, and Gentlemen,” quoth Peggy with a fine inclusive wave of her hand, “will, I’m sure, thus excuse me from the game to-night.”

But she had counted without either host or guests, for all of these save Sir Percy de Bohun on the instant pulled purses out and tendered them, crying, as with a single voice,—

“Fie! Fie! Sir Robin! Are we highwaymen? tricksters? Honor us by using our sovereigns as they were your own, eh, Sir Percy, have we not the right of the matter?” asked Jack Chalmers, turning to the tall young man, who, having crossed the room again, now stood leaning moodily against the chimney-piece, frowning, tapping hearth with heel in too evident impatience of the subject of discussion.

“I humbly ask your pardon, Mr. Chalmers,” he replies, “both for differing with you all, and for expressing the same. To my way of thinking”—adds Sir Percy, with deliberation, ill-matched by the flash of his eyes as they take a scornful measure of the supposed Sir Robin—“to my way of thinking, any gentleman who carries his company into any other gentleman’s chambers without the means of a paltry game of loo or écarté in ’s pocket’s not quite such a proper young man ’s he might be!” And with this, Sir Percy laid his hand upon his sword hilt, and Kennaston laid his upon that, attempting to stay the torrent.

“Tut! tut!” cried this one and that.

“His Lordship’s dead drunk with Cupid, Sir Robin, mind him not,” whispers another.

“De Bohun breaks a joke,” exclaims a third, all at once.

And in the same moment, also, upsprings my Lady Peggy, hand on hilt too, and says she loudly, same time as the rest:

“A pox on ye for a libeler! Sir Percy de Bohun, mayhap it’s the errand Your Lordship’s up in town a-pursuing hath turned Your Lordship’s brain?” Here Lady Peggy laughs in derision and stands full height updrawn upon her girl’s red heels.

“Curse me! but you are impertinent, Sir,” responds Percy, taking a step forward, his anger rising as he beholds his purpose galloping to the goal of its quick fulfilment. “What then, an it please you, is my ‘errand up in town?’ since you are thus familiar with my gaits; tell ’em off, Sir Robin McTart, I give ye leave!”

“With your leave, or without it,” cries Peggy in a voice that causes Chockey to lift the loft-cover an inch higher, and so, kneeling with nose flattened against floor, to behold her mistress’s fine and splendid show of valor. “I’d have you hear, Sir, that to persons of fashion the matter of your suit near Lady Diana Weston’s a jeer and jest of the first flavour,—for ’twere easy seen a lady of her quality, Sir, ’d not be a-wasting her time on you.”

“Damme! Sir!” cries Sir Percy, now thoroughly aroused and far more in earnest than ever he was at the beginning. “You lie! Aye, My Lords, Sirs, and Gentlemen! Nay, ye can not stop my mouth,” unsheathing his rapier; Peggy does likewise, each pushing and warding from them the restraining hands and words of their associates.

“A foul lie! My errand up in town, Sir Robin McTart, is to try to drown my sorrows as I may, because the only lady that ever I loved set me the pace to the devil by a-refusing of my suit come Easter-day, three months to an hour ago.”

Lady Peggy flushes under the coffee stains; her arm trembles; but she is valiantly happy and confident, and her heart goes beating the joyfullest sort of a tune beneath the ’broidered waistcoat she’d made for her twin.

“And her name,” cries Sir Percy with a glance of imperious, aggressive temper shot right into Peggy’s very face,—“her name’s not Lady Diana Weston, but ’tis Lady Peggy Burgoyne!—”

Now Chock’s whole head slips leash, and she bends with bated breath and heaving breast to listen closer.

Lady Peggy starts, but waving her rapier over her head, laughs loud, long and derisively.

“Lady Peggy Burgoyne, Sir,” shaking the hilt of his weapon under Peg’s nose, repeats Sir Percy. “And until you, Sir, with your damnable arts and silly bumpkin ways, when she encountered you in Kent, had turned her from me, she was to me kindest of ladies and of loves. Your servant, Sir Robin McTart,” concludes Percy with a low bow, sticking the floor with his rapier-point, “when and where you please!”

“Here and now!” cries Peg, her heart a-thumping for joy, but so pleasured and alas! so puzzled with the getting out of a scrape, which she has found so little difficulty in getting into, that she is feign on, and make the best cut she can with her cloth.

“Here and now!” repeats Her Ladyship, “for I do throw back into Your Lordship’s teeth the lie”—Peg bows low to her opponent—“you gave me whiles, and affirm that for these many years, or ever you, Sir, set eyes upon her, Lady Peggy Burgoyne’s been mine, heart and soul, Sir!”

“Damn you, Sir!” interrupts Percy hotly, unable to contain his choler,—“to so defame the noblest lady that ever was born!”

“I repeat,” cries Peggy, glowing with suppressed delight at her lover’s fidelity, and eager for as much more as he may have to vent. “Lady Peggy’s eyes are glued fast of this face of mine! Peggy’s hands are my hands! Peggy’s lips are my lips! Peggy’s kisses have ever been my kisses!”

At this, Sir Percy tears off his coat, waistcoat, cravat; flings them into the corner; rolls up his sleeves, while a confused murmur circulates amid the gallants over their cards and Falernian wine.

“Peggy’s heart beats in my breast!” continues Her Ladyship, ranting and swashing up and down the room; upsetting a couple of candles in her path, and now all unrecking of her womanish shoes. “Gentlemen,” panting, smiling, triumphant, saluting her companions with her weapon, “Lady Peggy and I do so adore, love and worship one another that we are not two but one!”

“Here and now!” shouts Sir Percy. “Off with your coat and ruffles, Sir, and choose any two of these gentlemen to your seconds, Sir; I’ll take who’s left!”

Chalmers and Kennaston press forward to Lady Peggy, while His Grace of Escombe and Mr. Wyatt cross to Sir Percy.

“Lord Kennaston, I pray you pace off the distance,” says Lady Peggy, now at the top of her bent and delirious with joy over Percy’s love of her, with no least intention of touching him, good fencer though she be, and willing enough—such a woman is she—to risk a prick at his hands for sake of the after-salve of the mighty gratitude and passion the minx is now sure of.

“Off with your trappings, Sir,” cries Percy.

“That will I not!” cries Peggy, taking the first position on the field of honor in all the bravery of her twin’s suit of gray velvets. “You’ll kill me, an you do’t at all, with my clothes on ready to my burial, and I swear ye all, with my latest breath, Lady Peggy and I’ll lie in the same coffin when it comes to that ceremony.”

Then in the smoky flare from the dying fire and the slovening candles stuck in their bottles; ’mid the murmur and succeeding hush of the gallants, some with cups, some with cards in their hands, Peggy and her lover salute and take their stands.

Says she: “What’s the word, My Lord?”

Says he: “If you like, let Lord Kennaston shake the dice-box; at the third throw, Sir, I’m here, ready food for your steel to flesh in!”

“It suits me well,” answers Peg, as her twin rattles the ivories. “Here’s for Lady Peggy!” cries she.

“Here’s for Lady Peggy Burgoyne!” shouts he, as Kennaston makes the third throw, and Chockey, like to swoon and she a stout heart, never-ail or afeard of even a churchyard on the darkest night, shaking like an aspen-leaf, puts foot on the top rung of the ladder; and Peg and Percy thrust, lunge, withdraw, riposte, hither, yon, keen-eyed, pitched to highest note, nerves strung to cracking—just for a few seconds, shorter time’n it takes to set it down, far.

“A touch, a hit!” cry all at once as a spurt of blood darts up the supposed Sir Robin’s blade, and Percy bows, declaring himself quite satisfied, as he must, though ’tis a state of mind he’s very remote from enjoying.

My Lady Peggy winces under her wound, but she has not been Kennaston’s playfellow for naught, and as ugly pricks as this one have been her portion in the past; Chockey, nevertheless, from her nest, pales and utters a smothered shriek which is quite lost in the loud talking that follows, while Chalmers winds the kerchief Sir Percy tenders about the wrist of the wounded.

“Now to the cards, gentlemen,” cries His Grace of Escombe, pulling out his purse. “To such a gallant as our friend Sir Robin here, my fingers itch to lose ten, twenty, nay as many pounds as his skill can rid me of; for such a pretty play of the steel as his must argue a lucky throw of the dice.”

“Hear! hear! hear!” shout they all, drinking brimming mugs to the two who have lately fought, and settling themselves at the tables with a rattle and a rush of laughter and merry humor.

Lady Peggy sits, gritting her teeth at the slit in her white flesh, with her back to the door and, betwixt the uproar and clinking and shuffling, she hears footsteps coming up the stairs. Some intuition bids her be the one to respond to the rapping that presently sounds out.

“Asking your pardon,” murmurs Her Ladyship to her companions as she quits the table. When, as she opens, a new-caught street urchin speaks sharp, with saucer eyes in-peering at the quality.

“An it please yer Lordships, there’s a fine gentlemen below as his name is Sir Robin McTart.”

Peggy draws in, bangs the door in the boy’s face, squares about, and says:

“By your leave, gentlemen, a most particular messenger awaits me below; for a few moments only, I crave your indulgence for my absence. I’ll be with you in ten minutes.”

“No! no! no!” cry they all, save De Bohun, who is counting his cards, and Sir Wyatt who exclaims:

“Yes, an it be a messenger on business for a fair lady; no, an it be otherwise. Gadzooks! Sir Robin, make a half-clean breast of it. Comes Mercury from Phyllis or from a mere man?”

Peg answers: “I swear to you, Sirs, I go down on business of the gravest import to a lady,” and makes for the door.

“Pledge her! Pledge her! a bumper! a bumper!” cry they all in one voice with much pleasant laughter.

“Here’s to Sir Robin’s nameless fair! Zounds! but for so little yeared a personage to have two strings to his bow!”

V

Wherein Lady Peggy doth encounter her flouted

lover, receiveth a rapier-prick: makes acquaintance

of her hated rival and

of Mr. Brummell.

And much more of a like nature reaches Lady Peggy as she plunges down the stairs and presently finds herself, by the light of the lamp of his chair, a-confronting Sir Robin McTart himself!

“Nay, nay, Sir! I am not Kennaston of Kennaston,” responds Peg, looking grave, and making excellent show of her blood-stained, linen-bound wrist.

“’Tis here he dwells, and, as I know well by reputation, you are a peaceful, law-abiding man, I’d counsel you not to mount. Such a company of cut-throat, cut-purse brawlers, Sir, as would not leave a farthing in your pocket or lace upon your shirt.”

Sir Robin, as Her Ladyship had shrewdly guessed, drew back and shivered at this lively description.

“Trust me, Sir Robin: hist!” Peg’s voice sinks to a mere whisper. “I am Lady Peggy’s best friend and neighbor at home; ’twould be her will, an she stood here, that you should not adventure your precious life in the unseemly crowd with which her brother hath seen fit to surround himself.”

“Lud, Sir! Who are you,” chatters Sir Robin trembling betwixt delight and terror, “that knows so well the temper of Lady Peggy Burgoyne’s disposition? What’s your name, Sir?”

“No matter for my name, Sir, I have Lady Peggy’s best interests at heart, and yours. She bade me, did ever I encounter you in evil neighborhood, tell you, for her sake, eschew it. Hark ye! Sir Robin, out of this hole as fast as your men’s legs can carry you. Above yonder, ’s one who’s sworn to kill you!”

“Who’s he?” demands Sir Robin, one foot now in his sedan, his little eyes twinkling both ways with fright.

“Sir Percy de Bohun,” replies Peg in a hollow whisper. “Look you, Sir,” showing her bloody wrist, “there’s a taste of his quality. I warn you—’tis from Peggy’s own self—get back to Kent, whence you came, and tarry not, for your life’s at yonder desperado’s mercy while you linger up in town.”

“Is My Lady Peggy returned to Kent to her godmother?” quavers Sir Robin, now well inside his chair.

“Nay, Sir; as her brother supposes, she’s at home at Kennaston.”

“I’ll seek her there!” cries Sir Robin, tendering his hand. “And, Sir, my humble duty and gratitude to you for your admirable condescension. I would I knew your name and station.”

“I’m up in town incognito, Sir, for a lady’s sake,” smiles the minx.

“When I return, Sir, I’ll seek you out at White’s or Will’s. I dare be sworn so fine a gentleman must needs be a buck of the first order.”

“Seek me, Sir, and Godspeed you down to Kennaston or Kent!”

At the word, Sir Robin in his chair sets forth a-swinging round the corner, light of heart and bright of hope, while the subject and object of his thoughts and passion stands for a moment leaning, sighing, betwixt laughter and tears, against the door-frame.

My Lady Peggy’s first impulse is to cut and run; indeed her slim legs are so stretched to begin, when the remembrance of poor Chock in her garret cage comes to her mind, and, with a grimace, she turns in, jumps up the stairs, and is in the midst of the group, now well on in their cups and more hilarious than orderly in their conversation.

Peg was not her father’s girl for naught that night. To the tune of three hundred pounds, fourteen and six, was she the richer, and rewarded for the many dreary evenings she had spent at Kennaston, a-watching her father win and lose with the Vicar and the Bishop, whenever the latter came on his visits.

By dint of spilling her wine deftly under the table, she had emptied as many mugs as the best bibber among ’em, and at four in the morning found herself the only one who was sober, or even awake.

’Twas not a beautiful sight thus to behold, in the pale pink of the dawn, a dozen or so of merry gentlemen a-sprawling about on floor, tables, chairs,—a-snoring and a-tossing in their sleep; but ’twas of the fashion of the times when, to be a fine gentleman, one must be drunk, at the least, once in the twenty-four hours.

All save Sir Percy; almost at swords’ points he had quitted the company hours before, a little in his cups, but steady withal, murmuring to himself as he fumbled on the rickety stairs—Peg, leaning over the rail, unseen in the darkness, womanlike to watch lest he trip and fall, heard him:

“’Sdeath! an what that popinjay say be true, I’ll marry Lady Diana out of hand, and show the minx I’m not to be cut out of a wife by such a flea-bitten rotten-rod as Sir Robin McTart!”

“So easy taken then is my loss!” says Peggy, with a renewed fire of jealousy burning at her heart, as she returns to the scene of her winnings.

Sick at heart, for a single instant she surveys the room, and then, finger on lip, it does not take her long to signal up to Chockey, motion her down with the calf-skin box, and to begin, with shamed face, in the darkest corner, to strip off her man’s attire.

Lady Peggy has laid aside the yellow wig; Chockey weeping, praying that they may get away in safety, is spreading out the Levantine fit for her mistress to jump into it, when, for the second time within the twelve hours, Her Ladyship’s heart stands still to the patter and thump of footsteps climbing the last flight.

“Hold, Chock!” cries she, clapping on the wig. “Bundle up my duds, tie ’em tight; so! give me it; pick up the box, put on your cloak and bonnet and a bold face; follow and ape me. An you love me, Chock, an’ I thrust, thrust too! an’ I knock ’em down, follow suit! I’d sooner die, Chock, than be caught now!”

With which, My Lady Peggy flung wide the door, pushed out the Abigail, drew her weapon, and, with a rush, the two of them tumbled down the stairs, taking on their way a giant of a man who struggled and struck out, and dropped fruits and flowers and curses, and yet gave in to the splendid tweeks and pinches which the lusty Chockey dealt him on his arms and legs, and, falling headlong, on the lower stairs, darted up the street crying:

“Watch!” at the top of his lungs, nor getting any answer, for Watch was snoring in the tavern and the sun now shining broad.

“Chock,” said her mistress, “go you on before me to the King’s Arms, where we alighted, engage the seats in the coach, and hark ye, child, an aught betide I come not, get you home without me and tell His Lordship I’m gone to Kent on a sick-call from my godmother. Lud! it’s lies all the way to being a man! I’ll not walk with you, lass; ’tis not seemly, and when I reach the inn I’ll pretend I know you not, hire a room, change my clothes and slip down to you, unseen if I can. Now, off with you, quickly, for I ache to follow. Would to God I could doff these garments and into my petticoats again!” added Lady Peggy ruefully, glancing at her hastily tied up bundle and, at the same moment, with the broad of her sword, pushing Chock into the street with a will that sent her a-spinning on her way.

Indifferent then, as though the outgoing damsel were no concern of hers, presently, with a swagger, yet ill-concealing the anxiety she felt afresh as now sobs and female voices assailed her ears, the mock Sir Robin McTart emerged upon the street.

There halted a chair between the posts. In the chair sat Lady Diana Weston accompanied by her woman. Both wept and trembled, while still afar the stout lungs of the terrified giant shouted:

“Watch!”

Peg stood still and stared; all the jealous blood in her burned in her cheeks. Lady Diana here! and wherefore? and at such an untoward hour; veil displaced, eyes red, but still most undeniably handsome, nay beautiful.

“Oh Sir!” cried Lady Diana beseechingly, raising two imploring hands outside the chair door toward Lady Peggy.

“I pray of your honor!” whimpered the Abigail in concert.

“I implore your protection, Sir, as you are a gentleman and man of honor, as your mien disposes me. I came here but now and sent my footman up to the rooms of a—a friend, who is ill, Sir,—with a token of regard in the shape of fruit and flowers, when the man must have been set upon by thieves and beaten, for he—”

“I heard him,” finishes Peg, stepping nearer to the chair. “And I assure you, Madam, I put the varlet who attacked him to his pace with a prick. If I can serve you further, command me.”

As My Lady bows low, she is conscious that it now behooves her to state concisely her name and station; and, loathing and hating the deception more than she could express, she still adds (her motive not unmixed with the natural curiosity to discover who is the object of Lady Diana’s morning call):

“Sir Robin McTart of Robinswold, Kent, at Your Ladyship’s service.”

Diana bows, blushes, almost ogles, minx that she is, noting well the fine eyes and beautiful mouth of the gallant at her side.

“Lady Diana Weston, Sir Robin, daughter to the Earl of Brookwood, at your service.”

Peg bows, hat in hand, bundle under arm. Swift as youth’s impulse ever is, says she, taking lightning-like measure of her chance and determined to probe matters to their core:

“Your Ladyship’s name was on the lips above,” nodding up at Kennaston’s windows. “I drank the toast with a will, I do assure you, and would double it now. Surely, if you’ll allow me to say so, Sir Percy de Bohun’s a gentleman of a rare good taste, likewise Lord Kennaston, Sir Wyatt Lovell, half-a-dozen more a-pledging Your Ladyship to the tune of nonpareil all night long.”

“You flatter, Sir, I do protest!” cried the lady in the chair, blushing like the reddest rose that grows, but who might say for whose sake? since Peg had named so many.

“Oh, Sir,” Lady Diana’s voice now lowered. “Your countenance is one to inspire confidence. I pray you judge me not harshly if I venture to inquire, since you were of their company, how fares poor Sir Percy de Bohun? The fruits and flowers I fetched were for him, since I am informed he pines, eats nothing, droops, mopes, and no longer is to be enticed among the fair. Can you give me news of him?—or of—Lord Kennaston?” adds Lady Diana wilily and with another magnificent accession of color. Thus did Slyboots pursue inquiry on that lame horse which is named Subterfuge.

“Aye, Madam, that can I. ’Tis as you say; but as you yourself, if report speak true, be the cause of his distemper, methinks you should know how to effect the cure. I see Your Ladyship’s man returning; there is no more danger. I take my leave of you, Madam,” hand to heart, bundle sticking out under other arm. “It is to me one of the most fortunate chances of life to have had this encounter,” bending sweet eyes, which Diana returns with a will. “Fear nothing! the cut-throats have long since made off by a rear alley. The shouter is doubtless ere this at his cover. Did you need my further protection, ’twould be yours.”

“From my heart, Sir, I thank you,” cries Lady Diana very sweetly. “May we meet again, and soon!”

Peggy bowing, walks quickly off, her pretty teeth gritted together.

“May we meet again! Never! Fruits and flowers! forsooth! Pines and droops! forsooth! ’Slife! and how the minx reddened at his name. A-seekin’ of him out like that at cock-crow too! Lud! an these be town fashions and morals I’ll be glad to get home! No I won’t! No I won’t!” spake out Lady Peggy’s heart fit to burst bonds. “Percy’s here, and my soul’s here, and ’tain’t no use to talk about having a spirit, and a-stoppin’ lovin’ when you ain’t loved! You can’t do it!”

Peggy, recking not of her path, eyes glued to ground, paced on, having forgot the whole world else, in the misery of her discovery of Lady Diana’s passion for Sir Percy.

There were few abroad at that early hour. Some market wagons leisuring to the city; an occasional chariot full of gallants getting home after the night’s frolic; and just now, at the cross of two streets, a handsome coach thrown open-windowed, with a gentleman, the very pink and model of all elegance, lolling back amid the cushions.

By the lead of his eyes ’twas plainly to be seen he had not slept for forty-eight hours or so, but otherwise his aspect was as if newly out of a perfumed bandbox. Suddenly his gaze caught Peggy at the crossing, fixed itself upon the lace cravat at her throat, and then, with a spring as alert as that of any monkey throwing himself out of tree by his tail, this mirror of fashion thrust his head out at window, jerked his coachman’s arm, said in a voice not loud, but piercing:

“Worthing, run down the young gentleman at the crossing; don’t hurt him, but run him down an’ I’ll give you twenty shillings!” He then sank back again amid the pillows.

No sooner said than done.

Just at the instant when Peggy recalled her position and was bewilderedly wondering where she had wandered to, clutching her bundle and all of a muddle, click! grazed coach-wheels against her shins, cock went her hat into the puddle, but, heaven be praised! her wig clung, and she clung to her bundle; out of coach the pink brocade gentleman, down from the rumble his footman, pick up Lady Peggy, hat and all, rubbing the mud out of her silk stockings, clapping her hands; yet relented she not from the bundle, and all a-breath the loller cries:

“Into my coach, Sir! I do humbly crave pardon, Sir, I do indeed. I’ll not take no for an answer, Sir, not by my oath! Such a damage from one gentleman to another, Sir, demands all the reparation possible, Sir,” and forthwith Peggy is lifted into the splendid coach and the splendid gentleman springs in after her, and the footmen jump up and the whip cracks, and off they whirl before she can open her mouth.

“Mr. Brummell at your service, Sir,” continues he, feeling of Peg’s palm, noting the wound at her wrist, and the pallor of her face which shines even though the coffee stains. “We’re en route to Peter’s Court where my surgeon shall attend you. ’Slife! Sir, you’re not hurt, I’m sure. I told Worthing not to endanger a hair of your head and it’s impossible he should have disobeyed me!”

Peggy hears this singular string of speeches and, although stunned a bit and not a little alarmed in her mind, she has country breeding at her back and such a robust constitution as rallies on the spot.

“I’d be obliged, Mr. Brummell, if you’d set me down at once, Sir! I’m none the worse, and I’ve business of import calling me far hence, and with dispatch.”

“Never, Sir, never!” returns Beau Brummell, with an impressive wave of his jeweled hand. “Zounds! Sir, I had you spilled to get me the pattern and fashion of tying your cravat from you! and split me! if I let you go until I’ve mastered that adorable knot! I’ve my reputation at stake, Sir, for the tying of ’em. You’ve outdone me at your throat, Sir, and ’tis Beau Brummell, the best dressed and worst imitated man in Europe, that has the honor of telling you so. Come, come, Sir,” continues this nonesuch, famed alike at Court and brawl for his finery and drollery, “out with your name, Sir, I beg, and render me your eternally grateful.”

Lady Peggy’s gaze falls inadvertently on the bundle across her knees; it begins to bulge and burst the paper and string, indeed a tape of her petticoat is oozing out even now as she pokes it back, hiding its tell-tale under the skirt of her coat.

“’Slife!” says Peggy to herself in a terrible heat. “An I must stop a man, I must. God’s will—or the Devil’s, as dad says—be done!” and forthwith she tucks up her knee, lays hand on sword-hilt, laughs quite merrily and answers:

“Sir Robin McTart of Robinswold, Kent, at your service, Mr. Brummell. I do protest, upon my oath! ’twas a marvelous device to spill me to borrow my tie. ’Tis yours, Sir, and the fashion of it, an you’ll do me the honor to accept a lesson.”

“Sir Robin McTart!” echoes the Beau delightedly, “my old friend Sir Hector’s son and heir? I swear, boy, you favor not your sire. Peace to his soul, ’twas an ugly gentleman, while you, Sir,—Zounds! The ladies’ll make hay for you, I promise you. Where do you stop? Are you up in town long? What letters do you bring?”

“The King’s Arms, Sir, in the Strand,” replies Peg glibly, while the Beau frowns. “I’m arrived but yesterday. I brought not a letter, Sir. There you have my history.”

“No King’s Arms for Sir Hector’s son. You’ll home with me, lad; and I’ll show you what town life is. I’ll put you up at the best clubs, introduce you to the Prince; present you at Court; dine, wine, mount you,—Gadzooks, Sir Robin, the man that invented that tie of the lace!” tipping his finger at Lady Peggy’s home-made cravat, “deserves all and more than Brummell can do for him!”

At which Peggy laughed the more heartily, as that she felt the paper beneath her coat skirts crack wider, and was spent wondering what she should do when they should reach Peter’s Court, and when she might be able to get into her Levantine once again.

VI

In the which Sir Percy de Bohun’s own man

goes on his master’s errand to Kennaston

Castle, crossing Sir Robin

McTart on the road.

Somewhat later in the day, as the sun peeped in at the narrow windows of Kennaston’s garret in Lark Lane, it shone straight down upon the face of Peg’s twin, and also upon that of Sir Percy de Bohun, just returned, after a tub and a grooming at the hands of his faithful man Grigson, who even now was performing like offices for the young host. The other gentlemen had long since been set upon their legs and fetched off to their homes by their men.

Percy held his chin between his palms, his elbows resting upon the table where cards and glasses still littered.

“’Sdeath, Kennaston,” cries he, without moving. “I can live this fashion no longer! To be shot like a partridge would be better. Flouted by Peggy, derided by this upstart Sir Robin, who, by my life! is a pretty fellow all said and done, is past endurance! Give me a pistol, Grigson, and I’ll put an end of myself now and here.”

To this passionate declaration, Kennaston merely makes answer by lifting an arm above the tub, waving it in the air, and, as Grigson scrubs him down, wagging his wet head and remarking:

“Don’t be damned ridiculous, Percy, and pray hold your peace, since I am at this moment composing an ode to my mistress’s smile.”

“Your mistress be hanged, Sir! What know you of love to sit in a tub and make verses to her?”

“I know enough of’t,” sighs the host, “to have been in like case with yourself any time this twelve-month! and ’tis a monstrous thing for you to thus impeach me, when ’tis you whom My Lady Diana favors rather than myself.”

“Lady Diana be damned!” cries Percy rising. “She’s a coquette, Sir, and at bottom adores you, as does the fish the bait the while she plays and sidles ’round it, being sure in th’ end she’ll swallow it, hook and all.”

“Very fine, i’ faith, yet while I sigh, you’re the one she smiles upon. Oh, Percy! Had I but a fortune! Could I but make my name in letters! Then perchance I’d stand my chance; but as ’tis,”—Peg’s twin fetches a sigh that sends the water splashing about the wine-stained floor.

“As ’tis, Sir, counsel me, an you love me. Shall I hie me to Kennaston and wait upon your sister?”

“Write her a letter of fire and sword, and blood and famine; stuff it full of oaths, protests, suicides, murders, as is a Christmas pudding of plums! There’s quill, ink and paper to your hand.”

“I’ll do it and send it by Grigson on my fastest horse this day. I should have the answer before Friday?”

“Aye, you should,” allows the host with an evident reservation. “Now, for God’s sake, Sir, stop cackling and let me finish my ode.”

Which he did a-sitting in his bath, while Grigson dressed his wig.

The toilet, and the letter, and the poem, were all three finished at once, and, without more ado, Sir Percy dispatched his man with the missive to Lady Peggy.

“Come not back until you deliver it in person,” quoth the lover; “an you show yourself minus an answer, I’ll ship you to the Colonies by the next packet.”

After seeing him off the two young men repaired to the coffee-house they frequented, and there the first news that greeted them was an account, exaggerated to the last degree, as was the fashion of those times as well as these, of “Lady D—— W——’s adventure with footpads in Lark Lane, where her chair crossed en route to her mantua-maker’s; of how Sir R——n McT——t had rescued Her Ladyship and Her Ladyship’s Abigail from the clutches of these villains at the hazard of his own life; had, single-handed, put the whole gang to flight; and this, although suffering from a severe wound in the right wrist, the which this gallant young scion of a noble name had received in an affair of honor with Sir P——y de B——n only that very night previous.” In point of fact gossip cried, and print set forth, that “the town was ringing with the valor of Sir R——n McT——t, whose fame as a buck and man of fashion was no less than his expertness at the saving of Beauty in distress. For be it known that no other personage than the renowned Beau B——l had set his seal upon Sir R——n’s mould by begging from him the pattern of his cravat and the mode of his knot. That Sir R——n was now a guest at Mr. B——l’s home, and, being up in town for the season, let ladies fair beware and set their most adorable caps, for ’twas well understood so fine a young gentleman was nowhere else to be met with, nor one of such courage and skill at cards, saddle, or the dance.”

The which as he read it gave Sir Percy no great food for congratulation, but the rather caused him to sink into a kind of melancholy from which no effort of his companion could arouse him. Like a dullard he sat, staring at the print or the walls, the livelong day, and far into the night, waiting for Grigson’s return, and beside himself with a silent jealous fury as each new entrance to the coffee-room gave his own particular version of Sir Robin’s vogue.

The real little Sir Robin, meanwhile, on his journey down to Kennaston in search of My Lady Peggy, had got some three hours’ start of the faithful Grigson, and even now, he, for the first time in his life, stood in the long, bare drawing-room of Kennaston Castle, tip-toeing to the mirror, pulling his wig this way and that in instant expectation of beholding the object of his passion, and rewarding her for her devotion to him, so manifested in the person of the gentlemanly “Incognito” of his last night’s experience.

Hark! Yes, her footstep on the stair, the swish of female garments, a halt at the door. Sir Robin minced the length of the room and, reaching the entrance, found himself face to face with Chockey!

“Your mistress, bud, your mistress! Here!” thriftily pressing a shilling into Chock’s palm. “Go tell her I am consumed with impatience, and eaten up with desire for a glimpse of Her Ladyship’s form, and figure, and face. Go! Go!”

But Chockey does not budge.

“What ails the wench? Deaf?” cries Sir Robin, pinching her arm, for which he gets back a smart slap on his cheek.

“Tut! tut! What manners is that, and you handsome enough to kiss,” adds the little Baronet diplomatically. “Come now, off and implore Lady Peggy to hasten.”

“Her Ladyship’s from home,” finally Chockey says.

“What! Not at Kennaston?” Sir Robin’s sharp eye can not help peering regretfully at the shilling Chockey twirls in her fingers.

“In Kent, doubtless, a-visiting her godmother, and a-hoping to see me there! eh, in Kent?”

“I don’t know, Sir,” replies the girl with a hint of tears in her voice.

“Don’t know! What do you mean?” exclaims Sir Robin suspiciously.

“I means, Sir,” fires up Chock, “that My Lady ain’t by way of telling me her matters. His Lordship, her father’s down with his leg; Her Ladyship’s mother is a-visitin’ the sick in York. As they supposes, Sir, Lady Peggy is in Kent, also, a-visitin’ the sick, Her Ladyship’s godmother.”

Chockey curtsies and turns to the door, out of which Sir Robin reluctantly goes, putting spurs to his horse, dining at the Mermaid and then chartering a post-chaise to take him, sans delay, to Kent.

He crossed but one traveler on his way from Kennaston Castle to the village inn; a man of stout and comely build on a steed that took even Sir Robin’s dull eye, so was its blood and lineage marked in its long splendid gait.

This horseman too pulled rein at Kennaston, sprang from his saddle, and, as Bickers hobbled up to take his beast, Mr. Grigson, for ’twas he, jumped up on the steps and caught Chockey’s apron-string just as it was fluttering in the closing door.

“Hey, missus!” cried he, twirling Chock about and chucking her under the chin, which was rewarded by as smart a slap as that which had erstwhile burned Sir Robin’s cheek.

“I must see Lady Peggy Burgoyne on the spot, without ceremony or a-waitin’ ’ere coolin’ my heels. I’ve a letter for Her Ladyship meanin’ life and death to my master, Sir Percy de Bohun.”

“Have you?” says Chock, looking with admiring eyes upon the smart livery of Mr. Grigson, dust and mud-stained though it was.

“Yes, straight from London town, where ’pon my life, there’s no sweeter mug than hers I sees before me now!”

“Lawk!” cries Chock, appeased. “But my mistress is from home.”

“Not here! where is she then? A-visiting in the neighborhood?” Mr. Grigson turns on his heel and chirrups for his mount.

“No,” returns Chockey. “She ain’t.”

“Well, whereabouts is she? For if it’s as far as the Injies, Grigson’s bound to find her and deliver this love-letter!”

“I don’t know where she is, Sir,” whimpers Chock.

“There, there! Don’t be a-cryin’ and a-sobbin’, Duckie, I ain’t gone, yet! Go ask His Lordship the address; bring me a mug of ale, and I’ll give you a kiss.”

“Drat you, Sir,” cries Chockey. “Don’t you be talkin’ like that!” Yet sidles she quite cozily in the encircling arm of the admirable Grigson.

“His Lordship, nor Her Ladyship, nor no one else knows where my mistress is.”

“What! eloped? Scuttled! Flown the nest! When? How? Where?” cries Sir Percy’s man thunder-struck. “She ain’t gone with Sir Percy! Can it be with Sir Robin McTart?”

Chockey shook her head vigorously.

“Look a-here,” says Mr. Grigson, now regarding the girl attentively. “Damme, but you knows where she is. Tell me and I’ll give you two kisses and ten pounds to boot.”

“Oh, Sir!” cries Chock, pushing away both kisses and pounds with one and the same hand. “I does know; leastways I knows my young lady’s up in London, but whereabouts in that pit of sin and willainy, I can’t say, nor who she’s with, nor how long she’s goin’ to stop; only she charged me make His Lordship and Her Lady mother believe she was gone to Kent, back again to see her godmother. There! I’ve been bursting to tell some one, and you’ll swear you’ll keep it secret, won’t you, Sir?”

Grigson obligingly nods and caresses Chock’s arm.

“Thank the Lord it’s out o’ me!” adds she.

“Amen,” ejaculates Sir Percy’s man with fervor, at the same time fixing a contemplative and shrewd eye on his companion.

“Her Ladyship up in town,—where, with whom, you doesn’t know; her father and mother thinks she’s in Kent; and you’re cock-sure she ain’t runned away with Sir Robin McTart?”

“That I am!” cries the girl, warmly. “Little squint-eyed monster!”

“Eh?” exclaims Mr. Grigson, who had beheld the supposed Sir Robin at Kennaston’s rooms the night before last, and clearly recollected that no such description fitted the slim, elegant, handsome young buck who had got a prick in the wrist from his own master’s rapier.

“Monster! I said,” repeats the girl. “Hist, I’ll tell you more,” says she, drawing close, hand over mouth. “You’ve seen the puppy. He was here anon, a-askin’ and a-tearin’ as to where My Lady was!”

Grigson stares.

“Aye, you must have met him on the road not ten rods off the Castle gates, for, as you galloped in, the undersized cockatrice cantered out. Lady Peggy wed with him, indeed!”

Grigson is now (recalling his having crossed a small squint-eyed gentleman as he came) morally certain that Chockey has been well drilled in her part, and that Lady Peggy has indeed run away up to London with Sir Robin McTart. So much for his thoughts; he says:

“I did. Fortunately I beheld the personage what you describes. Your humble servant, missus. I must be off and no time for love-makin’ to-day,” turning quickly on his heel and tossing sixpence to Bickers who holds his bridle at the stone.

“I ain’t ‘missus,’” remarks she plaintively.

“But you will be some day, lass, or my name ain’t James Grigson. Here’s to you and many thanks for putting me on the right track!”

“Tush, Sir! For the love of heaven and of anybody else you thinks a deal of, find my young lady!”

“Trust me,” flings Mr. Grigson from his saddle. “I’ll find her and him as holds her in durance wile!”

Kissing his fingers to Chockey, off puts Sir Percy’s own man to the Mermaid; stables his horse; hires a fresh one; claps spurs, and up to town as fast as four spavined bay legs can carry him, firmly convinced that he has solved the greater portion of the mystery, and that his master’s lady fair is indeed, beyond a doubt, the bride of the gallant Sir Robin, or mayhap his unwilling prisoner.

VII

In which is set down how My Lady is whisked

off to a rout, willy-nilly, at the home

of her hated rival.

Mr. Brummell was a most shrewd and an altogether kindly personage as well; he had easily, on alighting from his carriage and assisting Lady Peggy to do the same, espied the disreputable looking parcel which the supposed son of his dear old friend vainly tried to conceal; and the Beau was not long of putting two and two together, and of concluding that young Sir Robin had lost his all at play, and had even perhaps pawned his wardrobe,—saving the ill-looking bundle—for the price of his last few days’ food. Therefore it was, that, in the most obliging manner, he not only installed Sir Robin in an elegant and spacious apartment, but vowed he would at once send for both his tailor and perruquier to wait upon him, and ended by assuring his guest that his own man Tempers would be up presently to make the young gentleman’s toilet for him.

“Your pardon, Sir, Mr. Brummell,” quoth Peggy, while her maiden heart set off at such a race-horse flutter as it seemed must never quiet down. “But, pray you, remember I am country-bred, unused to town ways, have never had a man to wait upon me in my life” (the solemn truth!) “and should never know how to comport myself in such altered conditions.”

The Beau shrugged his shoulders in the French fashion, lifted his eyebrows, thought ’twas amazing strange that Sir Hector’s son should have been so ill educated; said:

“Your pleasure, Sir, whilst under my roof, shall be mine; nor can I misdoubt but that one who has had the genius to invent that tie is amply able to array and perfume himself, even to the dressing of his own wig.”

“You flatter, Sir, I protest!” answered the guest. “I await with impatience the moment when, in cleaner case, I may have the honor of instructing you in the intricacies of the knot you are good enough to admire.”

With any number of bows, the distinguished host closed the door, and My Lady Peggy was left to herself.

For a moment she stood quite still, her heart yet a-clapping madly in her bosom, her eyes wandering about the princely room in which she found herself, and at last resting on the mirror wherein was reflected her own slim figure, tricked out in Kennaston’s suit of gray velvets, and in the yellow wig, which was indeed the counterpart of the real Sir Robin’s pate. Her countenance?—sure none would recognize it since neither twin nor quondam suitor had—was dark with the coffee-stains; her eyes were ringed with sleeplessness and unaccustomed wine; her general aspect that of a young gentleman very much the worse for whatever his most recent experiences might have been.

Peg laughed, then she cried, then ran to the door and fastened it securely; then untied her bundle when out fell night-rail, green hood and kerchief, powder, patch-box, lavender, musk, pins, needles, red silken hose, Levantine gown, and veil of Brussels lace. She shook the skirt out of its wrinkles, laid off her wig and ’broidered waist-coat; unpinned her long plaited hair from its coil, and was stoutly making up her mind to brave all, get into her petticoats, and confess everything to Mr. Brummell. But, as she was about to wash the dark stains from her face, comes there a “rap-a-tap” at the door, and Peg, dropping the ewer, calls out fiercely:

“Who’s there?”

“An it please you, Sir Robin, Mr. Brummell bids me say to you that Mr. Chalk, the tailor, a person of the best fashion, will have the honor of waiting upon you for your measurements in a quarter of an hour, if you’ll be pleased to see him then, or later?”

Peg hesitated; there was a battle fought within her those sixty seconds wherein all that was noblest and best struggled and strove to know which was the right thing to do; nor could she determine, save that, at second thought of confiding her sex to Mr. Brummell, it appeared to her she could not.

“I shall be ready to see Chalk, I thank you, in fifteen minutes, more or less,” humming a tune with elaborate carelessness, rolling up the Levantine, the hood, veil, and night-rail into a ball, and pitching them into the chest of drawers; disposing the powder and perfumes and pins on the dressing-table; throwing the needles and patches into the fire; untying the kerchief and taking out soap, scissors, brushes.

“’Tis clear as water, I’m to be a man yet awhile,” whispered she. “Heaven grant it may not be long! So!” seizing the scissors and shaking out the locks. “Snip! clip, and away with you! that I was once vain of, because a vile deceiver named Percy vowed he loved you!”

And off came Peg’s hair, the which for silly liking of she stuffed into the drawer beside the Levantine and let fall a tear or two. Then snip, clip again as she had often done for her twin; so that, in no time at all, her head, with its short curly locks brushed back at this side and that of her broad forehead, had all the aspect of a man’s.

“There,” cried she, sweeping the last litter of her black tresses into the flames. “An I be a gentleman, I’ll be a gallant one. I sighed once to taste the sweets of bein’ of t’other sex for only one-half an hour.—Zounds! as daddy’d say, would that I’d never quit my frocks. What hath it bettered me? To behold with mine own eyes the charms of her who’s routed me from his heart; to hear him a-pledgin’ me just to please my brother, and for the sake of spitin’ Sir Robin McTart; to get myself into a position that makes me burstin’ with shame and feelin’ sure I can never hold up my head again in this world. Me, that’s always loathed a hoyden! and even have I the muscle of a lad, and can I stride a horse, and jump any ditch was ever dug,—yet, yet,—oh! How did I ever bring myself to put on these?” And My Lady Peggy slaps her breeches with a whack, and promptly falls upon her knees a-praying for her father and mother, and brother, and Sir Percy, and Chock, and Bickers.

“And, Oh God, high up in Heaven, forgive me for all my wilfulness and jealousy and foolhardiness, and stealin’ my twin’s clothes; and deceit, the which has got me into this foul station, wherein I have told naught but lies—and I do despise lies,—they are most disgustin’ and utterly wicked. Forgive me for all the horrible sins I’ve committed—”

Footsteps now resound in the corridor and the voice of Mr. Brummell’s own man says blandly:

“This way, Mr. Chalk,” as he raps gently at the door.

“—And for all those I shall have to commit!” concludes Her Ladyship, as she springs to her feet and unfastens the door, admitting the tailor a la mode.

That night, the suit of grays well brushed, her wig re-curled, and her pocket-napkin richly perfumed, her mother’s Brussels veil stripped up and made into a cravat of so ravishing a device as caused her host almost a spasm when he beheld it, Sir Robin McTart sat at honor-place at dinner, and was, to make a long story short, the cynosure and toast of the occasion.

The duel with Sir Percy, the rescue of My Lady Diana, the invention of a cravat, the nimble wit, the handsome face, soon bespoke Peggy into a favor, that, considering all other things, was well-nigh incredible; and when, the following day; she appeared in one of the suits Mr. Chalk had made, with a dash of powder on her wig and a bronzed complexion due to surreptitious purchase at the players’ cosmetic shop in Drury Lane, of sundry brown, red, and black pastes while making feint of being a comedian, the satisfaction of her host was unbounded.

“Robin, my boy,” said this one, with a side-glance at his guest, “an you’re a bit short of money, I’ll put a few hundreds to your account at my banker’s. Young gentlemen will be wild and spendthrift at times; London’s new to you I fancy, and—”

“I thank you, Mr. Brummell, from my heart,” returned Peg, “but I’ve three hundred pounds now idle in my pocket. That will last me, I’m confident, until I reach home, and, by your leave, I’m thinking I’ll quit town this evening.”

But Mr. Brummell has no ears for any such scheme. The Beau’s erratic fancy has not been caught by a new object for the mere sake of losing it; his joy in the dash and buoyancy, the originality and naïvete of his latest discovery is genuine, and no argument, of the very few Lady Peggy can offer, but he breaks down at once.

“Zounds, Sir! Are you a fool, Sir? Your sire was not one before you. To have half London a-talkin’ about you; all the prints a-chronicling your movements; all the ladies a-dying for a glimpse of you, and you only up in town these few days; and a-proposing to go back and bury your talents for tying Brussels, in Kent! Fie upon you, Sir! I listen to no such whims. Here’s my basket loaded with invitations for you already. Lady Brookwood’s rout to-night!” with a sly glance at Peg’s really blushing face; “Lady Diana Weston’s mother, as you are doubtless aware? The Charity Bazaar at Selwyn’s to-morrow; dinner at Holland House; Almacks’s, and my own little plan for next Thursday which is an outing to my seat in Surrey a-horseback; dinner, bowls, a look over the stables, and home by the light o’ the moon. ‘Back to Kent,’ forsooth! No, Sir, not yet.”

A few hours later, as Lady Peggy got into her magnificent suit of crimson satin, gold embroidered; as she beheld her image in the glass and caught the hilt of her sword in her hand, the blood that surged over her face and throat was ruby-red; and, at her wits’ ends for what to do, the girl’s tears forced themselves to her eyes once again.

She was to be off soon to Lady Brookwood’s; here she should encounter not only Lady Diana, but doubtless Percy himself; mayhap Kennaston, if he had been able to get him a decent coat to wear in place of the gray velvets! Doubtless, too, all those others she had met in Lark Lane.

For the hundredth time she cast wildly about in her mind as to how she could, now at this present moment, rid herself of the hated disguise, get into her Levantine, get home to her mother’s arms, hide her head forever, and never, no never! look into face of man again!

But Peggy saw no road. Every path seemed barred, save those that would forever damn her in the eyes of foes and friends alike.

“Oh,” cried she in desperation. “How easy ’tis to get into breeches, a coat, a waist-coat, and a wig, but God ha’ mercy! will I ever be able to get out of ’em?”

It is to be put down to the credit of My Lady Peggy’s up-bringing in the country with most times only a lad for her playmate, that now she bore herself with not only a fine ease and grace, but also with as splendid a swagger and daring as any young macaroni that carried a sword.

“An I’m to be a man, I’ll be one!” cried she, “and if Lady Diana ogles, lud! I’ll give as good as she sends. Little him as I love’ll know, ’tis of his sometime Peggy he’ll be jealous!”

So it was with a prodigious fine flutter of her napkin and a mightily impudent twirl of her eye-glass (purchased not two hours since), that Her Ladyship made her bows and kissed the finger-tips of Lady Brookwood’s handsome daughter.

“I am your most grateful, Sir Robin!” cried this one, “and more pleased than I can express to welcome you. I only regret that Lord Brookwood is at Brookwood Hall, and not here to thank you for rescuing his daughter.” And so forth and on, with presentations to a dozen of fine ladies, dowagers and damsels, and a precious lot of fine gentlemen; and it seemed to Peggy, in her simplicity, as if the whole of Mayfair were a-bowing and scraping and making her out a hero,—which indeed was not far off the fact.

Two watched her as she came in on Beau Brummell’s arm. These were Sir Percy and Kennaston; one green with anxiety for Grigson’s return from his errand, jumping at every sound; having left word both at Lark Lane, his coffee-house, as well as at home where he had gone, that Grigson should report to him at once he arrived; the other green with envy of Peggy and any other who neared his divinity, yet afraid and too diffident to approach her closer than with the devouring gaze of his eyes.

“That damned puppy again!” cries Percy, under his breath, as he surveys Peg in her satins. “By Gad, Sir, every lady in the room’s turning spite eyes on t’other, your incomparable Diana included, for fear he won’t stop and pay her a compliment.”

“Ah,” sighs the young poet. “Percy, an you loved like me ’twould be bliss to even gaze upon your fair. Think you I dare make bold now to cross and make my bow?”

“Why not?” returns the other gloomily. “Forgive my humor, Kennaston. Truth is, Sir, I’m mad, mad for Peg, and my ears are cracking and my brain splitting until that rascal, Grigson, gets back with answer to my letter. He’s been gone long enough to have made the journey four times over!”

“Oh, Percy,” returns Peg’s twin. “I love you as a brother, an could I but physic Your Lady into complaisance, I’d give my life for it. What owe I not to you?” adds the young man with deep feeling. “You’ve fed me, and zooks! Sir, to-night you’ve clothed me, for since the scurvy knaves that frightened Lady Di stole my suit of grays and my sword and hat, what had I left? Where would I be now, were’t not for you?”

“Tush, Ken, lad, I love you for yourself,—and ten thousand times more for her sake. Ken, I love her so that as I told her, if Sir Robin were a better man I’d cry off, an she said she loved him.”

“What said she?”

“Not that she loved him, but that she might,” he continues with sadness, as his eyes follow Peg on her almost royal progress about the drawing-rooms. “’Tis a proper fellow, enough, and I’d always heard he was a fright and a coward.”

Kennaston presently took heart of grace and crossed to pay his duty to Lady Diana, who, ’twas plain to be seen by every other than this bashful swain, was by no means the indifferent to him she would feign play off. Her color came and went as Kennaston, blushing to match his lady, ventured to spout his ode to her; and, leaving the pair to gallop on this pleasant path, Sir Percy at a distance unconsciously followed Lady Peggy, at least with his gaze.

Peggy meantime, denying right and left the story of her prowess, with quips and jests and ogles of the fair, still kept her eye on Percy. Not yet had she seen him approach Lady Diana; yet hold! even now, catching her own gaze fixed upon him, he turned and was presently bending over the little beauty’s fingers.

A pang shot through Peg’s heart, and the tears were like to force their way; she made an excuse and left the long drawing-room, taking refuge in a small apartment where the tables were ready for cards. She sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands. The candles were not yet lighted and she was totally unobserved. Dashing the salt drops from her lashes with her hand,—

“What am I!” she cried in her bitterness, “that I can not abide to even see him a-bending over her hand! Ain’t you no spirit, Peg? No pride? He’s not thinking of you, my dear; didn’t he say plain, if Sir Robin was the better man he’d give up to him! What kind of a suitor’s that, Peg? Lud! I’d not give up him to any one, whether they were my betters or no!”

Could My Lady but have postponed her exit for a few brief moments she would have beheld Sir Percy, at a word in his ear from a footman, quit Lady Diana’s side with but the smallest ceremony, dash out into the vestibule, seize with a vice-like grip the man who stood there pale and trembling, and gasp out:

“At last! the letter, the letter?”

Grigson shook his head and got even whiter.

“No letter?” Percy says in a dazed way.

“Only your own, Sir Percy,” handing back the missive. “Her Ladyship was from home, Sir.”

“Well, what of that! you infernal, damned rascal, did I not command you seek her, if ’twere at the other end of the world!”

“Aye, Sir, and the quickest way of settin’ about findin’ Her Ladyship was for me to get back to town, Sir, as fast as the cursed beast I was cheated into hirin’, Sir, would fetch me.”

“Speak out, for God’s sake! Is Her Ladyship up in London?” asked Sir Percy, actually shaking with impatience and astonishment.

Grigson nods and without more ado proceeds to give an exact if somewhat rambling account of his entire experiences, from the moment he had quitted his master until the present.

’Twere idle to attempt to describe Sir Percy’s state of mind. Up to now there had ever lingered in his heart the hope, nay, one of those unconscious beliefs men have, that in the end Peggy would be his. This news that Grigson brought crushed every such thought from his brain, but put in its place such a hatred of the young man now tasting the sweets of hero-worship (in little), in the adjoining room, as caused his fingers to itch for his steel and t’other’s flesh to meet once more, and to the death.

He drew Grigson in from the vestibule and, unobserved in the crush, down the corridor to the darkness of the card-room where Peggy still sat disconsolate in her far-off corner.

She, for the moment, is even unconscious that any one has entered until the voices arrest her attention.

“By Gad!” Sir Percy cries in a low tone, falling into a seat and clapping his brow. “Up in London! The woman, vowing Sir Robin had crossed your entrance, inquiring for Her Ladyship! Your meeting, not Sir Robin, but an ill-conditioned little popinjay with squint eyes and of the height of the dwarf that waits upon my Lady Brookwood?”

“Aye, Sir Percy,” returns Grigson. “No more like Sir Robin, which, Sir, begging your honor’s parding, is a very pretty young nobleman, with a good eye and a proper height.”

Sir Percy nods.

“Then,” speaking as if to himself and motioning the man away, “since she’s up in town without her parents’ knowledge and with a cock-and-bull story stuck into her Abigail’s mouth, it must be she’s eloped with the scoundrel out of Kent!”

Grigson going, ventures to ask: “Any more h’orders, Sir Percy? Will I cover the town, all the inns and taverns, Sir?”

The young man shakes his head and the servant bows himself away.

VIII

Wherein Lady Peggy picks a very pretty quarrel

with her presumed rival: and is

later bid to Beau Brummell’s

levee in her night rail.

At this precise moment Lady Peggy, scarce able to contain herself longer and, reckless of every possible consequence, being about to cast herself upon her quondam lover’s protection, and to be rid forever of being a man, is stopped short of her purpose by the words that now fall slowly from the young man’s lips.

“To deceive! to lie! to scheme! and plot, and bring shame and trouble upon her father and mother! Gad’s life!” Sir Percy brings his clenched hand down with a thump upon the card-table. “I had never believed that of Peggy! I’d have felled him that had hinted she could even plan a lie, or run off to a secret marriage with the best man that lives.”

At which speech My Lady’s color burned as never before since she was born, and her choler rose at the double charge, both the one that was true as to her deceit, and the one that was not as to her secret nuptials.

Palpitating with rage and wounded sensibility, with remorse and wretchedness; brought to bay with a situation she could not endure, Peg now utterly forgot her breeches or her shame at these, and, stepping boldly forth into the small circle of light shed in at the doorway, from the candles in the corridor, she saluted Sir Percy and spoke:

“I bid you good-evening, Sir Percy de Bohun, and, having had either the good, or the ill fortune to unintentionally overhear your remarks concerning Lady Peggy Burgoyne, I feel it my duty and pleasure alike to defend her from the unjust and unworthy attack which you, Sir, have just been pleased to make.”

“Sir Robin McTart!” exclaims Percy, with a start and in a prodigious anger. “I deny your charges, Sir, and would remind you that eaves-droppers are ever the cumberers of dangerous ground.”

“Sir!” responds Lady Peggy, her temper rising the more at the sense of the injustice and falseness of her whole tenure. “You coupled just now the name of a lady with that of Sir Robin McTart. I demand how you dare to assume such a responsibility, Sir, until at least either the lady in question, or I, gives you our confidence, or our leave.”

“‘Our’ forsooth! ‘Our!’” comes fiercely from between Sir Percy’s clenched teeth, while his hand flies to his sword-hilt.

“Why the devil, Sir—an you’ve been so lucky as win the lady for your bride—make off with her i’ the dark, shut her up in some unfindable hole? cheat her parents, and go strutting like some vain peacock up and down other ladies’ drawing-rooms? Be a man, Sir, and publish your triumph broadcast, nor let the town presently go gossiping and countryside wagging with the scandal of an elopement! Zounds! Sir Robin McTart, that!” flipping a stray card from the table almost in Her Ladyship’s face, “for your gallantry and your honor!”

“What do you mean, Sir?” cries Peggy, struck with horror all a-heap, and with terror as well, yet keeping up a brave show with her drawn rapier and sparkling eyes.

“Whatever you damned please, Sir,” returns Percy, now white-heat too, and most reckless of time or place.

“I’ve too much regard for Lady Peggy, Sir, not to postpone the climax of this matter until our next meeting, let it be when you see fit!” cries Peg with woman’s wit and wisdom too.

“’Slife, Sir, I ask you as one gentleman to another, nay, I implore it of you,” cries Sir Percy, rent betwixt choler, love and apprehension, “most humbly, is Lady Peggy your wife?”

Her Ladyship was now like to laugh, so near akin are mirth and sorrow, but she replied very loftily:

“I decline to discuss the matter, Sir, and would remind you that report hath your attentions engaged in quite another direction.”

“You know where Lady Peggy Burgoyne is at this moment?” says Sir Percy hotly, determined to push his matter to its ending this very night, and almost crazed by his passion and its balking.

“That I do, Sir,” returns Her Ladyship with a covert smile.

“Tell me, or I’ll brain you where you stand.” Percy makes an ugly lunge at his opponent with his fist, but merely as a threat.

“That will I not,” says she firmly.

What might have further ensued is, at this crisis, put out of the question by the entrance of Kennaston, who, espying Percy the first, cries out joyfully:

“Percy, Percy, Lady Diana hath given me leave to tell you she consents—”

“Tush, Sir!” interrupts Percy, jerking his head toward the other occupant of the room. “Sir Robin McTart and I have come near to blows, and must fight of a surety, on the subject of your sister, Sir; and ’tis for you to know without more delay that Lady Peggy is up in London, unknown to her parents; that Sir Robin hath her whereabouts and absolutely refuses to reveal the same.” Percy crosses the room, strikes a tinder and lights the candles on the mantel-shelf.

“You are cursedly badly mistook, gentlemen, both of you,” says Kennaston, quietly enough. “I’ve got a letter which I found upon my table this very night, just come from my sister at Kennaston,” with which her twin pulls My Lady’s most ill-spelled and crumpled missive from his pocket and holds it up before the four astonished eyes that are staring at it.

Peggy in amaze recognizes the letter she had written to her brother the day long since in the buttery, and which she had taken up to town in her reticule and must have dropped when she had paid her ill-starred visit to Kennaston’s chambers in Lark Lane.

“Frowse, the charwoman’s daughter, vowed she’d found it a-lying in the entry under the water-tub. There’s an end of your dispute, Sirs, I trust,” glancing from one to the other. “Come, come, Sir Percy, and you, Sir Robin, whom indeed the letter you brought me from Lady Peggy the other night doth most highly commend to my good offices, must be friends,” taking a hand of each. “Nor let Dame Rumor split ye asunder with her lies about my little twin’s being up in town. Gadzooks, Sirs, the child’s not a notion of a difference betwixt Mayfair and—Drury Lane! I beg of you, Mr. Brummell,” as this one now comes mincing in together with Lord Escombe, Sir Wyatt, Mr. Jack Chalmers and others for their game, “for you’ve the graces I lack in such matters.—These two gallants have had a difference, and ’tis you, Mr. Brummell, can set ’em straight again.”

“Cards! cards! Spades, clubs, diamonds, hearts,” exclaims the Beau, touching the Queen of Hearts with the toe of his high-heeled shoe, as it lies on the floor where it was shot from Sir Percy’s hand.

“Split me! but ’tis them that are at the bottom of every quarrel, Sirs; whisk me, but if a spade, or a club, or a heart, provided it be a lady’s, or a diamond, which the Jews have a lien on, ain’t the only causes for disagreement in this world!”

“Correct as your own toilet, Sir!” cries Wyatt.

“Now, ’twas hearts of course, damn ’em, and the queen of ’em that’s roused both your tempers, but for God’s sake, gentlemen,” taking now the hand of each which has slipped clear of Kennaston’s fingers, “bethink you, if the lady, whose name I can’t even guess, whom you both adore, stood here, what would her pleasure be, Robin, my lad, answer me, for of brawling there can be none here and fighting no more. Speak, Sir!”

“Faith!” answered Lady Peggy, with splendid valor and a rise in her color and her heels, “to my certain knowledge the lady’d have her name put out of the matter wholly, and she’d sooner die, Sir, than have any fighting over her preferences, by either Sir Percy de Bohun or Sir Robin McTart.”

The which being taken to be, by all present, a most prodigious and amazing gentlemanlike and politic speech, Sir Percy was feign accept, mock-smile and bow, while all the rest blew their lungs hollow applauding and praising his still hated and still suspected rival.

Peace restored outwardly, whatever else raged in the breasts of the two opponents, the gallants sat to their tables, Kennaston managing to whisper to Sir Percy across the deal:

“As I was telling you when I entered, Percy, Lady Di permits me to let you know she consents to my dedicating the ode to her, and Lillie, at the corner of Beanford Buildings in the Strand, hath engaged to publish it at once!”

But this, Lady Peggy, at a distant table, engaged in picquet with His Grace of Escombe, hears not; there rings in her ears naught save the words Kennaston uttered when he came into the card-room—“Lady Diana hath given me leave to tell you she consents.”

“Consents!” To what else but his suit? Which, egged on by his noble uncle, has been pushing any time these ten years, since boy and girl Sir Percy and Lady Di had played, ridden, romped, quarreled as brother and sister together.

“Consents!”

It echoes and resounds in Her Ladyship’s head over and over again the night through, and ’tis quite of a piece with her mood that she seeks out Lady Diana when tea and cakes are passing, and, with sly looks, congratulates Her Ladyship on the happiness she has this night conferred on a very gallant gentleman not so many miles away!

And quite in Lady Diana’s line of reasoning, having heard from Kennaston that Sir Robin has come up to town highly commended to him by his sister, and that, although he had been sorely jealous and distraught at the said Sir Robin’s good fortune in the matter of the rescue of Her Ladyship, he still believed him to be head over heels in love with his twin, etc., etc., etc., and so, Her Ladyship argued, Kennaston had doubtless confided to the said Sir Robin such tokens of her favor as the said Lady Diana had that evening seen fit to manifest; never for a moment misdoubting that any other swain was in the supposed Robin’s mind any more than he was in her own!

“Consents!”

’Twas reverberating in Peg’s ears and a-knocking at her heart for the hundredth time, when, returned to the card-room, she learned that Mr. Brummell was inviting the company for the Thursday to his seat Ivy Dene. ’Twas to be a gentlemen’s party only; out on horseback, the twenty miles, leaving the White Horse at ten in the morning, with luncheon en route at the Merry Rabbit at Market Ossory; a look over the stables and paddocks on arriving at Ivy Dene,—a quiet game, maybe, and such a dinner as only, the Beau swore, his country cook could get up; with the ride back to town by the light of the near-full moon.

Lady Peggy was soon made aware that this festivity was solely in her honor, and succumbed to it as cheerfully as she might.

God keep her! All the while staring at the ribbon of her twin’s wig, a-longing to cast her arms about his neck and pray him cover her up in his wraprascal and fetch her home; vowing she’d run away from ’em all the next minute, but where? How? Which way could it be done so that capture, discovery, and humiliation would not follow? Peggy could contrive no method, and the girl was literally terrified both at the prospect before her and by the realization that easy as it had been to jump into man’s attire ’twas well-nigh impossible to get out of it again. Should she on returning to Peter’s Court lay off her satin suit, wig, and rapier, and resume her Levantine gown, hood, petticoats, patches, and reticule, how and of what hour of the day or night could she in safety leave the mansion and find her way unsuspected to the King’s Arms and the coach? ’Twould be out of the question; servants were up and about at all hours, and were a woman seen emerging from her room, what piece of scandal would not the next day ring from one end of the town to t’other.

With “consents” tattooing in her brain, My Lady recklessly put all the heart there was left in her into the present moment, lost a hundred pounds to Escombe with a fine grace; won five hundred with no more ado; laughed, drank a little wine, went home with her host at four in the morning, and fell heavily asleep.

At two of the afternoon the Beau usually held an informal levee attended by the more noted of the bucks and macaronis of the town; vastly entertaining half hours, wherein, while soundly abusing the newspapers for their being stuffed with lies, the company still eagerly devoured every scrap of gossip they contained; where the amount of frizz towering above Lady This’s brow was measured and scanned, the better appearance of Lady That in the new-fashioned gown discussed; and the horrid aspect of the Hon. Miss So and So’s toupee and her general resemblance to a malt-sack tied in the middle, talked over. This couplet and that comedy were torn to pieces by as many pretty wits as chanced to be present, while Tempers dressed his master’s wig in a corner and a footman and a negro page handed chocolate round in silver trays.

The Beau, himself, reclined on his great bedstead with its fine tester, a half dozen of pillows richly laced at his head; a flowered gown about his shoulders, his night-cap on, a coverlet embroidered by the Chinese over him, his snuff-box at hand, reading aloud from the damp and freshly arrived print whilst Sir Wyatt, Lord Escombe, Mr. Jack Chalmers, and a dozen more sat or stood, cup in fingers, ’twixt lip and saucer, hearkening, eager, to the news.

“’Tis by this on the tip of every tongue in town that there occurred last night at Lady B——d’s rout an encounter (the second within a se’ennight), betwixt Sir P——y de B——n and a certain young gentleman from Kent whose handsome face, genteel manners, and dashing behavior, have conspired to place him in so brief a time at the very height of favor in society, and more especially in the eyes of Lady D——a W——n. It had been supposed that the affair recounted in these pages as having taken place in the chambers of Lord K——n of K——n was on account solely of the above mentioned adorable young scion of a noble house. We are in a position to assure the world of fashion that such is not the case, and that both the unfortunate disputes betwixt these two gallants are to be laid to the door of Lady P——y B——e, sister to Lord K——n. Report hath it that Her Ladyship is in London; rumor contradicts report and avers that the fair one has not stirred from home. The issue is awaited with interest, as the verbatim account of an unsuspected elopement may be looked for at any moment. Safe to say the vivacious Lady P——y B——e, whom the town hath never had the pleasure of beholding, has succeeded in stirring Mayfair to its depths and has been the cause already of a very pretty pair of quarrels between two young gentlemen of the first quality.”

“’Slife!” cried Beau Brummell. “Who now the devil’s Lady P——y?”

“By the dragon, himself, I never heard that Kennaston had a sister!” said Lord Wootton and Mr. Vane at once.

“Yes!” exclaims Sir Wyatt, tapping his forehead, recollectively, “I do recall that Sir Robin McTart, the night we were at Kennaston’s chambers, entered with the presentation of a letter of introduction from ‘Lady Peggy Burgoyne to her brother,’ and ’sdeath! ’twas, I believe, she about whom they fought, too!”

“Ha! ’tis not only Lady Di, then, that’s at the bottom of their quarrel after all,” says Mr. Brummell, reflectively.

“Where is the fair one?” asks Escombe. “Who knows that?”

“Faith! no one. Stop! Sir Robin must know, since ’tis for her he unsheathes twice in a week,” cries the host.

“Where is he?”

“Bring him in!”

“Send for Sir Robin!” is the cry of the company.

“Zooks! Sirs, but our reputations as gallants are broken up, an we’ve not seen her of whom the prints speak thus!” says the Beau, adding at once:

“Tempers, my compliments to Sir Robin McTart, and beg of him to join us, for, at the least, a few moments. I know he’s averse to early rising, but pray inform him to skip across in his dressing-gown and slippers, and night-cap, we’ve no ladies here about to ogle him!”

The which message being conveyed to My Lady Peggy a-sitting by the pulled-out chest of drawers, mournfully contemplating her long shorn tresses with barred door, arouses in her such a fever of sorrow as well-nigh chokes her utterance.

“Say to Mr. Brummell I’m asleep, Tempers, and crave to know his pleasure, the answer to which I’ll send as faithfully as Morpheus will permit, by you for Mercury! Off with you!” and Her Ladyship softly stroked her locks, and for the thousandth time went planning her escape.

Peels of laughter, rattling of rapiers, click of heels, and now—

“Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat!” on the door.

“McTart! McTart! Up with you from betwixt coverlets and into your Persian quilt!”

“Out with ye, Sir Robin, or by Gad! Sir, we’ll in, the fifteen of us! and rout you up from Morpheus’s arms.”

“Come, Sir Robin, dally no longer with sweet sleep; up, Sir, and bethink you of Beauty spelled with a P-E-G-G-Y!” shouts Sir Wyatt, chorused by the rest.

At first clap of voices Peggy stuck her hair back into the drawer, jumped up, and stood, hand upon the dressing-table, her expression like nothing else so much as that of a fawn caught in a thicket.

“’Sdeath! Gentlemen, I pray of you, a few moments grace!” cries she, trembling from the knees down, for ’tis quite of the temper of the manners of the day that in a second more the whole company should batter down the mahogany and burst in.

“Three-and-thirty, an you like, Sir Robin!” says Escombe, who is soberer than the rest.

“Give us the whereabouts of Lady Peggy Burgoyne,” shouts Mr. Chalmers, “and we’ll trouble you no more ’til doomsday!”

“Lady Peggy Burgoyne!”

“Lady Peggy Burgoyne!”

“Where’s Lady Peggy Burgoyne?”

“Where’s Lady Peggy Burgoyne?”

“Where is the fair one for whom you and Sir Percy de Bohun have fought with blades and tongues, twice now, since this day last week?”

“Lady Peggy Burgoyne!” cried they in hot concert, joined in most lustily by the Beau from his bed across the corridor, and accompanied by the pounding of fifteen rapier points on the parquet, and thirty fists on the woodwork, as well as the demoniacal screams of the Beau’s little negro and the parrot on his wrist.

“Tell us where she is!” came high staccato last from Sir Wyatt’s exhausted lips.

“My Lords and Gentlemen!” answers Her Ladyship, standing close to the door enveloped from top to toe in a sheet over her night-rail. “Would to God I could!”

There was a ring of heartfelt truth in the reply, and its utterance was succeeded by a second’s surprised pause.

The young bucks regarded each other with shrugs, pursed mouths, and interrogation points bristling in their eyes.

Mr. Chalmers, recovered of his surprise sooner than the others, says:

“Do you mean to say, Sir Robin, that the whereabouts of the lady with whose name the prints and the coffee-houses are ringing; for whose sake you came near to fighting Sir Percy only last night, and did fight him in Lark Lane o’ Thursday last, ain’t known to you?”

“Is she in London?” pipes the Beau, pinching the little black till he squeaks again.

“That I can not tell,” responds Her Ladyship. “I do know she’s not in Kent; and she’s not at Kennaston Castle. ’Slife! Sirs,” adds she, “I pray your consideration. Guess what you will; this matter of Lady Peggy sticks me closer than you dream, and I’d give my life to know her safe at home with her mother.”

Silence ensues; the disappointed fifteen get them back to the Beau’s bedside to talk over this latest development as to the mysterious Lady Peggy.

IX

In the which Lady Peg overhears a horrible

plot to murder; and wherein

Mr. Incognito encountereth

Sir Robin.

She herself falls into such an immediate flood of tears as shakes her well, and then up she rises from her depths, and with all the courage of her race and blood, she vows that, come another sunset she will quit Peter’s Court as if for a walk, and never return; that in small clothes, since it must be, she will journey back to Kennaston Castle, and risk all the discomfiture and disgrace her doing so may bring upon her.

In point of fact, My Lady Peggy was at that state of mind when it seemed to her no degradation or humiliation, no sorrow that could be visited upon her, would be too much punishment, or enough, for the sins without number she had committed since the luckless day she took the coach for town.

When she emerged from her room for dinner, ’twas to learn that Mr. Brummell had been summoned hastily to St. James’s on so important an affair as to initiate His Royal Highness into the mysteries of the new tie of Sir Robin’s own invention! and that he trusted in this audience to obtain permission to fetch Sir Robin to the Palace and present him within a few days to several august personages, etc., etc., etc.

Her Ladyship, therefore, dined alone, scantily too; food choked her, wine burned her throat, and to speak truth she was heartily glad not to have to drink it, for Her Ladyship was an abstemious young lady and believed milk, Bohea and Pekoe the beverages for her sex, to the exclusion of any stronger.

At twilight, having made her duds and her tresses up into a reputable enough parcel, Lady Peggy, in a suit of claret velvet, leaving all the rest of her man’s attire hanging in the presses, sauntered carelessly out of the house, declining the footman’s offer of a chair, or even a hackney chaise, or a page to carry her parcel, and set off at a swinging pace across the square and toward the river. It was her intention, by way of frustrating any attempts at tracing her which might be set afoot, the discovery of her flight once made, to so double on her own tracks, and to seek out such unimagined and unlikely streets to traverse, as must puzzle both bell-man, watch, and redbird alike, as well as her acquaintances.

She swaggered along toward St. Stephen’s where a coach containing quality was occasionally met even now; then down Horseferry Road, almost to the river’s bank; then along Jackanapes Row, with little idea of the cut-throat locality she was haunting; back again toward better neighborhoods; then a lurch to the Thames making into Farthing Alley and Little Boy Yard, at the end of which she found herself at the old Dove Pier.

Peg stood still, her heart beating both with her quick walk, and at the strangeness of all that surrounded her. She had no fear, because her arm was stout, her aim sure, pistols at her belt and a good sword at her side; and she was perfectly ignorant of any harm here to be found, greater than at the door of Beau Brummell’s house.

The dark dwellings of the yard frowned at one another, with not an ell of sky to share between ’em at their roofs; the sign of the “Three Cups” swung and creaked in the slow breeze; the river, black and gruesome, lapped at the foot of the stone pile against which she leaned. On the river the tired bargemen rested at their oars, and the dip of a water-bird was the only sound that struck upon her ear. Peggy was casting about in her mind whether to enter the inn and inquire her road to the King’s Arms in the Strand, and had just turned to do so, when in the cavernous doorway of one of the gaunt-looking tenements she beheld three figures. The faces of two were toward her, and by the light of the fish-oil lamp swinging at the next-door tavern, she beheld them, so sinister and forbidding as to cause her to halt for a space, and then, overcoming her dread, to pursue her path, but slowly and by crossing the yard.

As she did so, her weapon caught in her heel and as she bent to disengage it, a voice speaking in low muffled tones arrested her gait.

It was the voice of Sir Robin McTart saying:

“If I make it ten guineas apiece on the spot, you swear to leave him cold on the pier yonder, come Sunday night, or to tie a stone about his throat and throw him into the river?”

“Aye, aye,” grunts one of the two companions of this most valorous gentleman. “’E’s h’always ’ulkin ’ereabouts o’ Sunday nights.”

Lady Peggy, with such a pull-string of terror at her heart as she never had before, draws closer to the wall of the tenement before which she has halted, creeps nearer to the portal wherein these cavaliers are quartered.

“Let it be five guineas apiece to-night,” squeaks the Baronet, “and the remainder when the business is done?”

“The devil knock you into hell with your, ‘when the business is done!’” mutters the other. “We’s doin’ your job for you for little enough. Tain’t everyone as’d h’undertake the funeral of a h’Earl’s heir like Sir Percy de Bohun——”

Her Ladyship’s like now to fall in a swoon; but not she; only leans she a bit against the bricks, her bosom heaving, her eyes dilating, her lips bitten in until they are almost bleeding.

“Hush-h-h! no names, you varlets!” interrupts Sir Robin.

“Hey?” responds the other, “the walls ain’t got no h’ears, and if they ’ad wot I’m a-sayin’s the cussid truth, eh, Bloksey?”

Bloksey grunts.

“The town’ll be afire when it’s out that a gallant like ’im that’s heir to Lord Gower’s been done fer; and then, my fine gentleman, who’s to pay for’t, if we’s caught and if we ’appens to be seen by any one when we’re a doin’ of your job? No, money all down now, or Sir Percy lives as long as ’e likes, for us!”

Peg’s hand’s upon the hilt of her sword.

Shall she spring and run Sir Robin through?

Shall she hide and buy the rascals out at a higher price than he has paid?

But no sooner do these thoughts rush through her brain than the utter impossibility of compassing the one, or of performing the other, undetected, if even with her life, and she so at the mercy of these cut-throats, comes to steady her, and she realizes that her only part is to get away as fast as she may, and unseen if she can.

Meantime Sir Robin concludes his bargain with the two desperadoes, and as they withdraw into their haunt, and he turns on his heel, he espies Lady Peggy rounding the corner with her bundle under her arm. The little Baronet with a sidelong glance in at the hallway to make sure his men are out of sight, darts to the opposite side of the court on tiptoe, and then, putting hands to mouth, calls across softly, but clearly, in a tone half of joy, half anger.

“Mr. Incognito! Mr. Incognito! Ho! I say, Incognito!”

Peg stops short. ’Twere wiser perhaps to try to discover what had put Sir Robin McTart up to the murder.

“By Gad, Sir!” cries this one, making a dash now over to Peg’s side of the way. “Here have I scoured the town for you day and night, and no trace of you anywhere! ‘Incognito’ me no more, Sir! Who are you, Sir? Damme! I’ll stand no more such nonsense!” Sir Robin’s valor’s thoroughly based on the knowledge that, were blade to be unsheathed to his hurt, he could and would shout for his hirelings to the rescue.

’Twas the first and only time in his life that he was ever known to urge, or even hint, a quarrel in propria persona.

“I’ll ‘incognito’ you to the end of the chapter, Sir Robin McTart,” answers Lady Peggy, clapping hand to hilt.

“Very well, Sir, very well,” says the Baronet, reflecting that another corpse might cost him ten guineas more, ere he were done with it; and besides yearning for the news of His Lady which he thinks he may glean. “I’ve small stomach for fightin’ any man. Religion don’t teach us that lesson, but ’tis a devilish trick you’ve played me, Sir.”

“In what way, Sir? Out with it,” replies Peggy.

“You, Sir, sent me to Kennaston a-seeking Lady Peggy Burgoyne, Sir; she was from home, and not a word else could I buy or wring out of her servant’s cursed mouth. Then I hied to Kent, believing, from your fine messages to me from Her Ladyship, that she must be there at her godmother’s. No, Sir! she was not; nor could any one tell but that she was at Kennaston Castle for all they knew. Back in town post-haste, I seek Lark Lane, where her brother lodges, so I had heard, only to learn that he has gone to stop with Sir Percy de Bohun, in Charlotte Street.”

“Well, you sought him there?” inquires Peg quivering with suppressed excitement.

“I did not, Sir!” replies Sir Robin with emphasis.

“Thank heaven!” says his companion fervently, an exclamation which may do double duty, and is well taken by the little gentleman from Kent.

“No, Sir; you do not suppose, Sir, that I’m a-going to risk a life that’s dear to Lady Peggy, at the hands of a ripping brawler and sure-kill like Sir Percy, do you?”

“Ah, Sir Robin,” quoth Her Ladyship. “If you knew what a consolation it would be to Lady Peggy to hear of your unwillingness to hazard your precious person in such company, ’twould ease your mind and heart.”

“Look you!” whispers Sir Robin, plucking at Peg’s sleeve. “But tell me where she is? This mystery’s killing me! How fares she? Does she pine for me? and is this true?” With shaking hands Sir Robin takes from his pocket a copy of a print of the day previous, and unfolding, reads to the astonished Peg the following paragraphs.

“Town’s talk is all for the very pretty quarrel betwixt Sir P——y de B——n, and the gallant and handsome Sir R——n McT——t of Kent. ’Tis all over Mayfair, and far beyond, that the cause of the dispute’s the lovely but mysterious Lady P——y B——e.”

“’Slife!” interrupts Peg, catching at straws. “You now perceive, Sir Robin, why ’tis that Her Ladyship must keep her whereabouts a secret, even,” she adds with sentimental deflection, “from you. Trust me, Sir, as you would trust her, and be guided by my counsel!”

Sir Robin nods vigorously, fluttering his sheet with anxious fingers. “Listen, Sir, listen, to this further.” He reads on. “Sir P——y de B——n has sworn by all that’s sacred, so ’tis said, to stick Sir R——n McT——t to the death, and serious consequences are feared.”

“Ah!” cries Lady Peggy, overjoyed to hear anything that may serve to keep the little Baronet and Sir Percy from meeting. “’Tis a gentleman of his word, I promise you. Better get back at once to Robinswold, and let London and Sir Percy gallop to the devil, an they see fit!”

“Nay,” replies the one addressed. “Not I, Sir Incognito. It is not for a McTart to turn his back on danger, but the rather,” and here by the fish-oil gleam, the little gentleman’s squint eyes leer cunningly up into Her Ladyship’s face: “The rather,” continues he, glancing cautiously around, “take measures to protect myself.”

“Very commendable of you, Sir Robin, by my faith,” cries Peggy, although she shudders, now linking her arm in her companion’s, and assuming an air of easy confidence, by the which she hopes to ensnare him into a complete revelation of his plans.

“Since you go armed, and are, I doubt not, a master in the art of self-defense, what have you to fear from Sir Percy de Bohun?”

“True,” responds the Baronet, with a reservation to himself and no mind at all to proceed any further with his revelations. “Gad! Sir, a fellow like that,” clutching at the newspaper stuck among his ruffles, “ain’t to be trusted as long as he’s above the ground. I swear, Sir! I fear to walk abroad and hold myself housed at my inn in Pimlico, close, not daring to show my face. A ruffian that’s publicly printed as seekin’ life’d stick me in the back in the dark, an he got the chance.”

“Nay, nay, Sir Robin,” says Peg, up for her sweetheart, “he’s not that sort of a gentleman—but, look you, keep close, frequent neither club, coffee or chocolate-house, or rout or drum; eschew Vauxhall, Richmond and the play-house, or any likely place where bucks gather, for trust me, Sir, an you do meet Sir Percy, there’ll be the devil to pay, and his blade’s his obedient slave.”

Poor Peg! She has not only to protect Percy of his life, but, as before, to prevent any discovery of her usurpation of the little Baronet’s name.

“Curse him! I fear him not!” responds this one, his itching fingers twisting about the empty purse in his pocket.

“But of Her Ladyship, Sir Go-between?” adds he presently, as they emerge upon the broader and better lighted road. “’Pon my life, but to so find myself the hero of a romantic passion with the Lady secluded in a mystery, a nobleman thirsting for my blood, a nameless gentleman playin’ Mercury betwixt me and my fair, ’tis amazing, Sir! prodigious amazing!” Sir Robin struts and takes snuff very comfortably, since he has got out of a very dangerous environment.

Peg’s soul sickens within her as she listens to him.

“Tell me now, how fares she?”

“Not so well,” answers she.

“You’ve seen her?”

“Not I.”

“Are like to?”

“No, Sir.”

“You can convey messages to her by some fond way she’s planned to get her news of me, eh?”

“I can, Sir Robin.”

“Sir, whoever you are, for pity’s sake, tell me where is she?”

“Not far, Sir.”

“Gad, Sir, to touch her hand, her cheek! You’re in her sure confidence? She does favor me? She will not give me hopes, Sir, to turn around and break my heart by marryin’ of another?”

“Lady Peggy’ll never marry any man, Sir Robin, I’m of the opinion, so I’d not give that for your chances!” answers she.

“Think you she ever cared for Sir Percy?” asks he.

“Sir, who can fathom a woman’s heart? ’Tis deeper than the sea; so deep, methinks, ofttimes she herself holds not that plummet that can sound it. Sir Robin, I take my leave of you.”

“Hold! hold! Sir, not so fast. Where next may I encounter you?”

“That must be as Her Ladyship says,” answers Peggy. “Your inn’s in Pimlico?”

“Yes, the Puffled Hen, not far off Battersea Bridge.”

“Farewell, Sir, and look you keep close in-doors, and risk no quarrel with Sir Percy de Bohun.”

“Farewell, Sir,” watching Her Ladyship turn down the street as he turns up. “Gad’s life! ’twas well he happened when he did, and not earlier, to eavesdrop my bargain with the wharf-rats! ’Sdeath! Risk no quarrel with Sir Percy! Not so long as there’s guineas left to buy corpses with!” and the little gentleman trots over to Pimlico, tolerably well pleased with his evening’s work; there, however, to be greeted with the reading of more newspapers, including that one which had earlier in the day so entertained Beau Brummell and his familiars.

Not for a moment did the Baronet mistrust, or have a suspicion, other than that his fame had caused him to be made the subject of such a pack of pretty stories as was then the custom of the press, as now, regarding any gentleman of position and gallantry. Sir Robin’s vanity easily swallowed the dose, and he even slapped his thigh and laughed his little dice-rattle laugh, as he reflected how safe he really was with never a challenge or a brawl to his cowardly credit since he got his first flogging at Eton.

He actually mouthed over his prospective wooing, and assured winning of Lady Peggy, and felt a calm satisfaction in the knowledge that the one rival he feared would so soon be beyond the reach of ladies’ smiles or tears. No qualms came to disturb his genial enjoyment of purposed assassination. In those days to kill was nearer men’s tempers than it is to-day. ’Twas with blackguard and man of honor alike, the first redress for even the pettiest sort of a dispute; with the difference of method only, that the gallant blade fought out his quarrel on the open field, while the craven bought a hireling’s dagger to do it in the dark.

Meantime, My Lady, by as direct a route as she can fathom out of the labyrinth of her ignorance and her distracted state of mind, makes back to Peter’s Court with her parcel of duds still under her arm.

She enters, mounts the stair-case, seeks her room, closes the door, and sits down.

“’Tis now not to be doubted,” she says to herself, “but that the Devil’s at the helm of my ship—and that I am to be a man for the rest of my life. ’Sdeath! as dad says, I’ll stop over till Sunday night’s o’er past, and as surely as my name’s Peggy Burgoyne I’ll foil that little dastardly groat of a Baronet’s plot to murder him that I once l-loved. Bah!” cries she half aloud. “What’s the use of mincin’ matters that’s true? Him that I love! Even if he’s dyin’ for Lady Diana, and goin’ to be her husband instead of mine! ‘Consents!’” murmurs she, flinging herself on the bed in a flood of tempestuous tears.

In vain regretting, she now too fully realized that her own wilful words, her jealousy, her falsehoods, her deceits, were the sole causes for Sir Robin’s terror, and, therefore, for the abominable scheme which he had just concocted.

Presently she arose, tossed the bundle once more back into its hiding-place, and set to pacing up and down the floor as she’d seen her twin do at home when he was looking high and low for a rhyme.

’Twas weightier matters kept Peg moving for an hour or more, and quick-spinning as were her heart and temper, her brain bore a more even balance.

First she had thought to warn Percy by a letter unsigned; the which she knew he’d pitch into the fire and think no more about. Then, that she’d write one to Kennaston imploring him to keep Percy from the pier Sunday night or any other; this she soon recognized would have the fate of t’other. Then, ’twas to contrive some plan to fetch him to Richmond, Windsor, any place else for Sunday; but to this arose the objection that the blackguards cheated of one day, or place, would not fail to wait upon their prey some other. At the last, Her Ladyship’s shrewd common-sense and indomitable pluck plainly showed her there was but one safe plan out of the danger; and this must be to go herself to the river Sunday night, and there concealed, armed, await the coming of the cut-throats from their den, and from the rear, put a shot into each at one and the same moment.

Could she do it?

Her Ladyship had muscles of steel, no nerves, as the fine ladies of her day comprehended them; as brave and loyal a heart as ever beat in any breast; good faith in God, for all her frowardness; and that species of love burning within her for Sir Percy de Bohun, which has, not a few times in the world’s history, made frailest woman into man’s equal for courage.

To Lady Peggy there seemed a divine compensation in the fact that it had come to her, to save the very one whom, by her lies and wilfulness, she alone had been the means of endangering.

X

In this same Her Ladyship’s mount is shot

dead under her in Epstowe Forest, and

she makes off on Tom Kidde’s horse.

This young gentleman now stood looking from a window of his uncle’s house, upon all the dewy leafing beauty of the Park at May. His brow was knit, his lips tight shut, his hand amid his ruffles clenched.

At the table sat Kennaston, inky-fingered, scribbling; eyes now rolling to the ceiling, now roving hither and yon.

“Ah!” sighs this one. “If the critics do not find this canto to their taste, may I be damned!”

“You’re like to go to Court to the Devil, I’m thinking then, dear lad,” speaks de Bohun over his shoulder.

“Fame! Fame!” cries the young poet, pushing back in his chair, wig awry and quill poised in air. “I’ll hunt thee to my dying hour, and if thou escap’st me then, ’twill all be Lady Diana’s fault.”

“How’s that?” asks Percy, with, however, but small ring of interest in his voice.

“Oh!” exclaimed Peg’s twin, “the minx mocks me! ’Tis Monday, kindness and all smiles, to wake on Tuesday for indifference; pouts on Wednesday; lure-me-ons o’ Thursday; forgetfulness for Friday; radiance for Saturday, and all a-jumble, sweets-and-frowns! showers! sunshine! what you will!—and will not!—for my Sunday fare.”

Percy sighs and smiles.

“Percy, sometimes I think Diana does love you!”

“No, Sir, never. We’re like brother and sister, nothing else, save my uncle’s absurd, obstinate (now-cured) whim, since childhood, to match his heir with Brookwood’s heiress. Odzooks! Ken, you’re like every other swain that ever sighed, always looking for a rival to be jealous of! Lady Di cares for you; an you doubted it before, ’tis time to take up hope, since you are asked to Brookwood for a visit, and go popping off to-night, with me left home to think alone on Peggy.”

“Zounds! Sir, ’tis not you only that’s thinking of her!” cries the young man rising and crossing to the fire. “But, what would you! if I call out the bell-man, publish her disappearance in the newspapers; get word to my father and my mother; what comes of’t all, but scandal? and like as not dad an apoplexy, and My Lady mother a set of fits and a death-bed!”

“Ken, I’m a damned fool ever to stop inside of doors or to cease pacing streets, haunting inns, shadowing Sir Robin McTart, until I find her!”

“Fie, Sir, if she’s gone off with Sir Robin McTart, ’tis, I promise you, with a wedding-ring on her finger, and not else! An she loves him, what’s to be said or done, if he’s her lawful lord?”

“Naught. I myself went down to Kennaston yesterday. I said nothing to you, Ken,” he adds, noting the other’s surprised and reproachful start, with a hand upon his junior’s shoulder.

“I thought I’d not interrupt the epic and your frenzies about Lady Di, with my troubles.”

“Well, what news of Peg? Any?” asks her twin anxiously.

“None. I saw Chockey, and only got from her what Grigson had, the positive assurance that her mistress had gone up to London. ‘Of her own free will?’ I asked. ‘Yes, Sir Percy,’ said she. ‘Alone?’ I inquired. ‘No, Sir Percy,’ was her answer, nor could I force, frighten, or buy the baggage into any further confidence. She did beg of me, however, seek out Her Ladyship, if I could, and find how she fared.”

“Gad’s life, Sir! She has eloped. ’Tis clear as crystal!”

“One thing more, I asked Chock: Had Her Ladyship money in her purse? ‘Lawk, Sir Percy! cried she, ‘two hundred pounds I know of!’”

“‘Two hundred pounds!’” repeats Peg’s twin in vast amazement. “’Tis sure more’n she ever saw before in our whole lives put together. Oh, the girl’s safely wedded, Sir, beyond a doubt!”

“Sir!” says Percy, sitting at the table, with his head low in his hands. “The blackguard’s won her from me!”

“I fear so, Sir.” The two men’s hands meet and grasp in the silent fashion of their sex: ofttimes more eloquent than any words e’er speeched.

“Would I had made a hole in his heart that night in Lark Lane!” cried Sir Percy next.

“Sir Robin’s nimble, Sir, and knows a trick or two with steel, as well as dice.”

“Aye: a gallant every inch; ’tis for that I hate him all the more; and yet, Ken, sometimes, lad, when I’ve been a-staring at him from afar, I’ve caught something in his countenance resembling Peg, and it’s that’s made me halt like a chit at provoking of him further.”

Kennaston nods. “Aye: I’ve remarked it; but held my peace, Percy, for ’tis said man and wife often grow to look alike, and I doubt not, sometimes begin after the same pattern.”

Sir Percy sighs again: turns up the room with drooped lids; in silence getting that grip upon his soul which noblest natures insist on with themselves, even in crises like his. ’Tis a bitter battle, closer fought and quicker, too, than any won or lost with swords and guns. The struggle’s writ upon his face as he goes; but when he comes his victory’s writ there too.

“Kennaston,” says he, very quiet and off-hand, “I’m thinking I’ll go to the Colonies, to Virginia.”

“What! no!” ejaculates the poet, placing a hand on either of his friend’s shoulders.

“Yes, Ken, dear lad, I could not live in England without her; perhaps yonder, over the sea, in the new land that’s growing up, I may learn to lead a new, better life, just for her sake that’s lost to me forever. At the least I can strive, at such a distance, to serve my country and my King like a man—until the end I’ll pray for comes.”

Kennaston turns off, with tears in his eyes.

“Mostly,” says he brokenly, “were not Peggy my twin, I’d be in a ripe mood for a-cursing of her! When, Percy?” asks he, after a pause.

“As soon as may be,” is the reply. “I’ve the promise of a commission by my uncle’s influence! Come, come, lad o’ my heart,” laughs he through his own misty eyes. “The wind’s not in my ship’s sails yet. I promised Mr. Brummell for his expedition to Ivy Dene for the morrow, and I’ll hardly be ready in all points to get under way before you’re back in town from your visit to Brookwood; whence I foresee you’ll fly with Diana’s ‘yes’ betwixt her kiss on your cheek.”

’Twas now Mr. Brummell’s famous and long-talked-about party to Ivy Dene this very next day that dawned.

Now, Her Ladyship had vowed to herself that, come what might, she would avoid this, even did Fate keep her in London. ’Twas no part of her program, although she could do it as well as any sporting squire, to make for her future any such memory as riding a horse astride for thirty miles out and back, in the company a half-score of gentlemen must furnish; yet, so is each of us rather the creature of circumstance than will, that the hour appointed found Peg mounted on a gray with blood in his veins, and a-pacing down Piccadilly to the White Horse beside Beau Brummell’s bay.

She could not, with Sir Robin’s murderous pact in her perpetual view, make up her mind to omit a company that should include Sir Percy.

It seemed to her that any day spent by him out of her sight might prove fatal; that Sir Robin’s hirelings might conceive it better to their purpose to put an end to their intended victim before the Sunday. So, aching with an insane but not unnatural impulse to pull rein and confess all; burning with shame to remember ’twas of Lady Diana’s sweetheart she was thinking; mortified beyond belief every time her saddle grazed her breeches; intent lest an unsuspected sword should flash from the hedge-rows, the sheep-cotes, or the shadows of Epstowe Forest, which they traversed on their way; My Lady Peggy, wishing amidst all this that she had never come to town, yet contrived to display a very cheerful mien, to laugh as loud as she dared, keeping her high notes cautiously to herself, as she had in her speech ever since the night, as Sir Robin, she had made her first appearance in Lark Lane—to join in jest, quip, prank, such as a gay cavalcade of jovial gentlemen were then wont to indulge in.

Such are some of the strange vicissitudes incident to being that most amazingly delicious compound, a wilful and withal true-hearted woman.

As Mr. Brummell had planned, they halted for refreshment at the Merry Rabbit at Market Ossory, and left, after a game of bowls on the green, to pursue their way. Percy lingered a bit in the rear: truth to tell, his reflections were none of the gayest, and the presence of the supposed Sir Robin McTart, and the conclusion, which, together with Ken, he had been forced to reach, that Lady Peggy had run off with the Baronet, did not by any means conspire to the lightening of his spirits. As he watched his presumed rival, heard the ringing laugh, the brilliant jest: noted the careless air, and thought of this cavalier as Lady Peggy’s lord, his choler knew no bounds, and it appeared to him that, come what might, he must invent cause of quarrel, and one or the other of ’em be left cold on the field.

“Why,” a thousand times he asked himself, “this mystery regarding her marriage? Why not have wedded Sir Robin from her father’s home, and with her father’s blessing, since,” Sir Percy reluctantly admitted, “no fault could be found with so fine a young gentleman; and his fortune, he knew to be considerable.”

He was aware that Her Ladyship was romantic to a degree, and he could but decide that this predilection had caused her to elope and to preserve the matter in a wrapping of secrecy for a time; no doubt even now from her retirement looking forward to the hour when she should emerge as Lady McTart!

Sir Percy gritted his teeth together and struck his spurs so deep that his horse gave a plunge which brought him up, neck and neck, with the gray of the supposed Baronet, and the black of Mr. Chalmers.

“To the rescue, Sir Percy!” cried this one jocularly. “Your assistance I beg, and the loan of your wits in our argument.”

“With all my heart!” answers Percy, scenting a possible chance to worst his rival, even in a battle of words. “What’s the subject?”

“A truce to ’t!” exclaims the Beau, with an expressive shake of his head at Mr. Chalmers, who, however, seldom notes any obstacle to the pleasure of his present moment.

“No truce at all, Mr. Brummell!” answers he gaily. “’Tis—”

“’Tis nothing whatever, Sir Percy,” interrupts Lord Escombe, putting his hand on Chalmers’s rein, and adding in an undertone: “Gadzooks! man, hold your peace. The matter’s like tow and tinder betwixt Percy and McTart.”

“’Pon my soul, Gentlemen!” now cries Percy, “I insist upon Jack’s being allowed to proceed with his remarks. If he wants my counsels, they’re his. Come, Sir, speak.”

“’Tis but this,” says Mr. Chalmers. “I say to Sir Robin that since the world’s busy with rumors of his secret marriage to Lady Peggy Burgoyne; since as I learn (by my man, who had it at the gate of the very best authority—Gad! Sirs, ’tis a fact, even if we don’t relish it, the gist of our gossip comes from below stairs, up!) that Lady Peggy is from home, her father believing her in Kent at her godmother’s!” Mr. Chalmers smiles, “her mother being in York, believing her safe at Kennaston, I say, My Lords and Gentlemen, it behooves Sir Robin confide the matter to his best friends, and give them chances to congratulate him and the Lady. Have I the right of’t, Percy, yes or no?”

Percy is silent for a moment: it seems to him a desecration of the sweet, modest and womanly girl he has so long adored, thus to hear even her name, much less a discussion of her most private matters, made into mirthful subject on a morning’s ride.

His anger, too, is great that the man whose name is coupled with hers has not already put a stop to such a conversation, even were it at the point of the sword.

Shall he, here and now, so reply to Mr. Chalmers as shall breed an instant retort from Sir Robin, and a challenge on the spot? The wild thought even flashes through his brain that Sir Robin might, by the grace of God! be left dead on the ground, and that some time in the dim future he might win Peggy back to himself.

But, with a tightening rein, he checks himself, as well as his horse, as he answers.

“Mr. Chalmers, the Lady you name is one whom I honor most deeply, and it seems to me if she has seen fit to go into seclusion, or to marry secretly, that, while I may wish to God it had been in open church! I must continue to respect her preferences, until she elects to change them;” with which, breaking the little pause of silence which follows, Sir Percy gallops ahead, joining Mr. Brummell, who has put himself quickly out of the commotion he had foreseen as likely to arrive.

Meantime, it may be correctly imagined that Her Ladyship, with all her sex’s exquisite ingenuity at plaguing itself whenever it possibly can, had seized upon those words of Sir Percy’s most easily twisted into a means of self-torture.

“I wish to God it had been in open church!” instantly stuck itself in her thoughts beside “Consents;” the two forming just that species of flagellation which ladies so situated in mind are wont to inflict upon themselves.

The supposed Sir Robin, from this on, until the arrival of the party at Ivy Dene, became taciturn, even morose, and not a syllable could be got from him in answer to the wildest gibes.

Her eyes intent upon Sir Percy, who now kept to the fore with his host, My Lady Peggy, on the keen lookout for the possible assassin, and to the tune of “consents,” and its running-mate, “I would to God it had been in open church!” put in a very dolorous twenty miles; but, on dismounting at Mr. Brummell’s doorstep, she endeavored to infuse a little joyousness into her looks and speech.

Indeed, ’twas difficult; yet no more so to-day than any other since she had been coerced by circumstances into an acceptance of the Beau’s hospitality. Every mouthful of bread and meat Peggy ate well-nigh choked her, as she remembered ’twas meant for Sir Robin McTart. She felt herself a trickster, a villain of the deepest dye, and yet saw no way out of her usurped character with honor and repute; no way of keeping in it save by the deeper dyeing of her soul in sin, which she promised herself, and heaven, to expiate as soon as Percy should be safe from Sir Robin’s men.

The afternoon was spent as had been planned; the country cook’s dinner was voted a perfect success: Mr. Chalmers, slightly raised by wine, even going so far as to send her down, with his compliments, his favorite ruby heart-pin: when, on the spot, not a gentleman present but whipped out a jewel from ruffle, finger, pocket or fob, and Peggy herself tying ’em up in a pocket-napkin laced with Brussels and perfumed like the civet-cat, sent them down to the astonished lass in the kitchen.

A game of cards was in order after the repast: a tilt at politics: a wager on the question of tea in the Colonies; Lady Peggy and Sir Percy keeping, by the grace of each, well apart in all these encounters; and at twelve o’clock, just as the moon was rising behind a bank of splendid star-fringed clouds, Mr. Brummell and his guests set forth on their homeward road.

The beauty of the night was such as soothes and casts its own mantle of peace over even those unquiet spirits which may be abroad.

It reminded Lady Peggy, as she rode along, of just such another when she and Percy had wandered up and down together in the weedy gardens at Kennaston. Of that identical night Percy also was thinking, and of his wilful Lady’s bright sallies, quick smiles, frowns; yea, even of one little touch of her red lips, light as thistledown, which now he seemed to feel the ghost of, on his forehead.

The cavalcade had left the highway some distance behind; the moon was fast being overtaken by the clouds whence she had, an hour or more ago, emerged; the dews fell thick, and the scent of the hawthorn was sweet in the air as they plunged into Epstowe Forest.

“Ah, Gentlemen,” cried out Mr. Brummell, snapping his whip, “by Gad, Sirs, what a night for Tom Kidde and his merry men! the skies dark, the moon playin’ hide and seek, fifteen watches and purses, and as many rings, pins and seals between us as you left not at Ivy Dene with my cook Elizabeth!”

“Ha! ha! ha! No fears of Tom Kidde, an he knows our caliber, jumping out upon us!” laughs Lord Wootton.

“’Slife! Sir, he’s the sort of highwayman to jump out on the best mettle that strides horse-flesh or carries gold. The young devil’s afraid of nothing that breathes, and has been the terror of travelers now these three or four years gone,” says Vane.

“He’s not above one-and-twenty, smooth-faced as a girl, those say who’ve caught a glimpse of him under his mask; dresses like a macaroni, voiced like a choir-singer, and nimble as an Indian monkey!”

“Frequents he this neighborhood?” queries Lady Peggy, who at mention of the word “highwayman” has tightened her rein, clapped a hand on her holster, and felt her heart thump, as she involuntarily connects it with possible danger to Percy.

“That he does,” said Mr. Chalmers. “His den, or one of ’em’s somewhere in the depths of Epstowe; and no one can tell when or where he’s like to turn up next.”

“When did he turn up last?” says Sir Wyatt, laughing.

“I can tell you,” returns Vane. “’Twas about Candlemas. I was down at home on a visit from town, when the news came, almost frightening my mother out of her wits, and setting the maids a-shivering like so many poppies in a storm. Tom Kidde had pounced on Lord Brookwood not a mile from his own gates, lifted him off his mount in the politest fashion imaginable, rifled His Lordship’s pockets, appropriated his weapons, and ridden off on his victim’s horse, leaving His Lordship tied to a tree at the roadside, where he was found by Biggs, the J.P., the next morning, a-bellowin’ and a-cursin’ like a wild bull.”

A hearty laugh greets Mr. Vane’s description.

“Yes, but that ain’t all of’t, My Lords and Gentlemen,” continues he.

“By no means!” cries Beau Brummell, out of his fit of hilarity. “I recall now, that I rode over from Lauriston Castle, where I was visiting, that very morning, and heard the adventure from Brookwood himself. I fancy he had the laugh, or will have it some day, on Tom, or some of his men, for the stolen mare was none other than His Lordship’s famous ‘Homing Nell.’”

“Is it possible!” exclaims Sir Percy, “the mare that’s been taken off a hundred miles, let loose, and finds her way home again; the mare that’s been sold and ridden fifty miles away, and then, when she felt a hand at her mouth she could master, has taken the bit between her teeth, and the one in the saddle’s only sometimes been able to keep his seat, and let her take him straight back whence she came?”

“The very same ‘Homing Nell.’ Brookwood’s sure of her getting back sooner or later,” says the Beau.

“They’ll never catch Tom, though,” cries Escombe.

“If they do,” remarks Vane, “he’ll hang not two hours after he’s bagged; his death-warrant’s been lying signed in Mr. Biggs’s pocket-book any time this twelvemonth; and there’s still a gibbet standing on the hill above Brook-Armsleigh Village!”

“Zounds! Sirs!” exclaims Mr. Chalmers, “what a life ’t must be, tho’; sleep o’ days, wake o’ nights, prowling under the branches, harkening for game from dusk till dawn, all seasons the same, one’s heart in one’s mouth, till the hoof’s heard, and then a masking dash, a brawl, a thrift quick as the lightning’s flash; a corpse or two, and your purse the heavier by as many guineas as the game’s had under cover—and all to the tune of the owl’s cry, and I doubt not for some sweet Maid Marian’s sake!”

“’Slife! hear the boy!” cries Mr. Brummell. “One would think him sired by a Jack Sheppard rather than by the gentlest Sir that ever lived. For your froward tendencies, Sir, you shall pay a penalty.”

“Yea, yea! a penalty! a penalty!” cry they all.

“In what kind?” returns Jack, waving his hat over his head.

“A song! a song!” they answer.

“Which one?” asks he, nothing loath, for his lungs are lusty and his reputation for singing above the ordinary.

“What you will,” they answer.

“Well, then, what say you to ‘Lady Betty Takes the Air,’ since all can join me in the chorus?”

“Good!”

“Percy,” says Jack, “you’ve a pretty pipe in your throat; give me the key, will you? not too high, you rascal, I’m not vainglorious at my music. So, and, so—there,” as Percy does as he is asked.

When all the May is deck’d about

With hawthorn bud and blow;

When pinkly shows the heather’s tip,

And harebells nod a-row—

Lady Betty takes the air,

Sing ah fa, la-la-la!

With a rush hat on her hair:

Sing ah fa, la-la-la!

When all the brown earth thrills to green,

When rivers laugh and sing;

When lark and thrush cajole and coax,

And all the wood’s a-wing—

Lady Betty takes the air, etc.

When Corydon most sad, forlorn,

With wrinkled hose, distraught,

All flouted by his worshiped Fair,

Walks forth as one that’s daft,

Lady Betty takes the air, etc.

When, at the turn-stile next the park,

The sad swain stops to sigh—

“No lady ever lived so dear

As she for whom I’d die!”

Lady Betty takes the air, etc.

When, as the sun walks up the glade,

And as the milkmaid hies

Across the paddock with her pails,

And as the lark doth rise—

Lady Betty takes the air, etc.

Cries Betty, flaunting past, “Oh fie!

A gallant all unkempt,

Such ungenteel and woful sight

Kind fortune me exempt!”

Lady Betty takes the air, etc.

When speaking thus, the May-breeze blew

Her rush hat o’er the stile,

And Corydon caught quick the gaze,

And swift his sigh turned smile,

Lady Betty takes the air, etc.

Thus, when the May is deck’d about

With hawthorn bud and blow,

Sweet Betty ties her hat-strings fast,

A gallant in the bow!

Lady Betty takes the air, etc.

’Twas ever thus, dear maids and men,

Whene’er ye walk abroad—

’Tis e’er the little breeze that blows

Each lady to her lord!

Lady Betty takes the air, etc.

Every one joins in the chorus with a hearty good will; all save Her Ladyship. Peggy dares not lift her woman’s voice, lest Escombe at right, or Wootton at her left, shall hear its most unmannish lilt. She mouths the words, though, and listens, as she has many a time before, to Sir Percy’s tones, and wonders if the sentiment is making him think of the Lady Diana.

The Lady Diana, however, is very far from Sir Percy’s imagination. He has been moodily ruminating on the possibilities of Tom Kidde (the most renowned desperado in all England of that day) suddenly bursting upon the party, and leaving a corpse behind him—that of Sir Robin McTart! He has been picturing to himself the profound pleasure it would give him to assist in fetching Sir Robin to the nearest church for decent burial, and the almost hilarious joy that would be his in attending his rival’s body to the grave! These were, according to the strict code, most murderous thoughts, and yet how pleasant, if how altogether unprofitable they were also.

Mr. Chalmers is in the midst of his last verse, his voice echoing into, and back, from the depths of the great green wood; there is not a wisp of the moon visible by this, and no light, save the halo from her beauty which lines and rims the vast masses of clouds above them.

Peggy is listening to the song; she hears it well: also the crunch of her horse’s hoofs on the narrow path; also, the crackle of the fresh twigs as they snap before the advance; and too, so sharp are her ears, the sleepy cheep of some disturbed bird in its nest, and, what else?

What is this curious stealthy stir, far-off, and creeping nearer in the wood?

And, hark! Peggy puts her hand to her ear to hear a subdued whistle, sweet, tuneful, underbreath, but patent to her sense, and too, to Sir Percy’s.

Before either can move, or, indeed, had as yet gathered the impulse of even self-defense, into the midst of Mr. Chalmers and the rest, with their chorus, dashes a company of riders in masks.

A shot, low-aimed, and merely intended as a slight warning of what may be expected, should occasion demand, strikes the ground at Her Ladyship’s right.

With remorse and reparation at his heart-strings—’tis the kind of man who could be but generous to his worst enemy—Sir Percy’s horse is flung betwixt the supposed Sir Robin and the band.

“Good evening, My Lords and Gentlemen,” says the leader, in a voice like a lute. “I thank you heartily for coming my way! Purses and watches, merry Sirs, jewels, trinkets, snuff-boxes, if of gold, pins, fobs, seals, these are all the toll I demand, and shall be forced to collect, if you show any disposition to deny.”

It might he wisely argued that, while this speech was being made, any gentleman might have either run the highwayman through, or put an ounce of lead into his heart, but the fact of the matter was, each gentleman found himself face to face with another gentleman who held a blunderbuss up to within three inches of his nose.

My Lady’s first thought had been that Sir Robin’s men had not waited for the Sunday night to come, but presently she recognized the truth, and, stung by the fact that Sir Percy had put himself between her and danger, she was the only one of the whole company who stirred in her saddle other than to do the bidding of Tom Kidde.

While the rest were busily engaged in emptying their treasures, she, making feint to do the same, says very low and tauntingly to Sir Percy:

“Had I but one to show fight with me, I’d ne’er give in to these scoundrels.”

“As soon done as said, Sir Robin,” whispers Percy. “No man can say I’m his lesser in courage!” with which he wrests his bridle from the blackguard whose hand’s upon it, whips out his sword with one hand, picks out his pistol with the other, grips his reins in his teeth, and strikes with steel and shot, both at once.

Peg’s his match, imitating him with such a will as sets every gentleman of ’em a-shooting, a-lunging and a-cursing with all the arms and breath he’s got; and sets the robbers for a second to their wits, for they are not used to any sort of encounter, save one that’s terror-stricken and submissive in the opponent.

’Tis a bit of a mêlée quite in the dark; slashing and pounding betwixt the branches: now a man unhorsed, anon up again; shots resounding, powder flashing, until in about ten minutes or less the chief makes a plunge for Sir Percy, crying out,

“So ’twas you said ‘fight,’ was’t! Have a care; no man can defy Tom Kidde and live to tell it!”

“Nay!” shouts Her Ladyship, with spurs all inches into the gray’s sides, making him rear as she puts herself between Percy and the highwayman, “’twas I said ‘fight’!”

Whizz! and a ball intended for Sir Percy strikes the gray dead under her.

Whizz! and her ball strikes Tom Kidde from his mount.

In less time than it takes to tell it, Peg was straight in the highwayman’s saddle; he was picked up by two of his men, bleeding, set before one of ’em, and off: My Lords and Gentlemen find themselves once more alone in the midst of Epstowe Forest, a-crawling about on their hands and knees a-gathering up their spilled guineas and trinkets by flash of tinder-box.

Sir Percy, trying to explain to them who had been the means of their recovering their valuables and of putting the desperadoes to flight, cries out:

“I tell you! we owe’t all to Sir Robin here! ’Slife, Gentlemen, I’d not have ventured to think of resistance had it not been for him. ’Twas he said, close in my ear, ‘fight,’ and by Gad! Sirs, he’s lost more’n any of us; the horse shot under him.”

“The gray’s well lost teaching Tom Kidde he can’t terrify all the men in England,” answers the Beau from his sprawling search after his diamond snuff-box.

“Ho, Sir Robin! Sir Robin! Sir Robin!” Sir Wyatt shouts it out, and the rest of the company take it up with a long, mellow cadence that echoes for a mile.

“Answer man, for, by the faith, if we can’t pledge you here in anything but a lap of May-dew out of a primrose leaf, we’ll drink you such a bumper, an we reach the White Horse, as never was filled before! London’ll toast you at every dinner-table in Mayfair. Odzooks, Sir, were you the fashion yesterday, what will you be to-morrow!” This from Escombe.

“Where is Sir Robin?” asks Percy. “He was beside me not five seconds since, but now, by my tinder, nor yet by the coming dawn, can I descry him,” shading his eyes with his hand and peering about, for of a truth ’tis close to four o’clock, and, notwithstanding the heavy clouds, the east begins to thrill with the touch of day.

“Robin! Sir Robin! Ho, now! Think not to play a trick on us and presently spring from a greenwood tree,” says Wootton.

“Sir Robin,” exclaims Percy loudly, “I pray you answer and leave not your friends to imagine evil.”

“Tut, tut, ‘evil’,” puffs the Beau, rising from his knees. “Evil’ll never happen to him. Zounds! but my legs ache! He’s laughing in his sleeve now, hard by; Robin’s not one to court notice or praise—as modest a youth as I ever beheld.”

“Worthy of Lady Peggy Burgoyne even, I suppose?” says Mr. Chalmers mischievously, as he adjusts his recovered fob. “I could embrace him for the rendering of me back my watch, but I think him a fool to eschew good company and make home alone to town.”

“Jack,” says Percy, low, “I like not his quitting of us. ’Twas too sudden. I believe I’ll go a-hunting him,” pulling his rein as the cavalcade once more prepared to start.

“Where?” asks Jack. “Bah! be not such a ninny; belike he’s off to his Lady, to win kisses off her lips by the rehearsal of his prowess. An a man chooses to flee me, I let him: do you the same, Percy; ’tis a good advice, I promise you!”

“But suppose those devils attack him again when alone?” says this one, not all reassured, as he and Jack linger a bit in the rear of their companions.

“Go to the devil!” remarks Mr. Chalmers, blithely. “I’m for breakfast at the White Horse, and for leavin’ the hero of the hour to eat his where he sees fit. He’s safe enough.”

“I’ve a misgiving,” answers de Bohun, “and he risked his life for mine to-night. I’ll strike off here to the west and join you when I find him.”

“Good luck to you for a fool!” laughs Jack, putting spurs and going on to tell this news to the others.

The instant that Lady Peggy felt herself in the highwayman’s saddle, she knew from long acquaintance with every colt Bickers had bred, raised, or broke, since she was six, that her wrists had met their match. Before she had time to utter a word, turn her head, or think, she felt the warm flesh under her quiver with that recovering impulse which horsemen know so well; that streak of untamed and untamable nature which lies, however deep-hidden, in every four-foot that breathes, and which never fails to spurt to the front when it gets exactly the right chance.

Peggy’s light, nay, by this, weak hand, now gave the big black its chance, and with a snort, a toss of its head, and a vicious swell of its sides, it laid back its ears, took the bit between its teeth as if it had been a mess of oats, and reared a length on its forelegs: when, finding its rider still on, it started on a run which Her Ladyship had not the slightest power to check. All she could do was to keep her seat.

Like a flash, out of the forest on to the width of the heath, plume waving, sword flapping, laces rippling, curls flying; the mare’s mane slapping in her face; legs and arms and will all at work to stop the beast or bring it into some sort of subjection. To no purpose. The black head now low, as if picking up a scent from the turf it tore; now up, as though snuffing its goal from afar, the mare skirted the heath, gained the meadows; over hedges where the birds rose in flocks behind its heels; ditches, where the muddy waters splashed over Her Ladyship’s satin clothes: here a bolt into an orchard, leaving a ribbon a-hanging on a limb; over the wall like a rocket, and, at breakneck gait, through a hamlet, rousing the people out of their beds to peep at pane, and wonder. Slap-dash into a pasture, scattering ewes and lambs like wool before the wind, taking a five-bar into a common, thence to highway; scampering a footbridge to leave it shivered behind them, and all Peg’s thought just a brave prayer to be kept alive, so that she might not fail of foiling Sir Robin’s men Sunday night!

Where she was going, she knew not. Where she was, she had no smallest idea when, as the sun looked over the long low line of horizon before her, she with a shudder beheld a gibbet outlined against the morning sky. The black gave a lunge that knocked her feet out of the stirrups (quick in again), reared, whinnied like a devil, and, nose to ground, now made her rider understand that up to the present she had done nothing much in the way of speed, or of efforts at emptying the saddle.

Yet Her Ladyship stuck on, with flying colors, too, and no loss of either wig, hat, weapon or will, and with grateful heart she now found herself being spun across a magnificent park, where the deer fled before her, it is true, but at the upper end of which she saw looming the turrets and towers of a fine castle.

XI

Wherein Lady Peggy is condemned to be

hanged, and sets forth, attended by the

clergy, for the gallows.

Although Sir Percy had cheerfully foretold for Kennaston the roseate picture of Lady Diana’s “Yes” crowning the young poet’s somewhat diffident suit with untold happiness, the fact was quite other. Her Ladyship, on the day of Mr. Brummell’s party to Ivy Dene, having overheard the Honorable Dolly Tarleton, in the library, laying six to four to Lady Biddy O’Toole, that their host’s daughter was “only waiting for the beautiful young poet’s asking, to jump into his arms immediately,” did, with such sudden change of demeanor from sweets to sours, languishing eyes to averted looks, smiles to pouts, corner chats to open flouts, put her lover into a state of mind, the like of which he presently described, as only he could, in a copy of verses, which the next night at White’s were pronounced to be, indeed, “the masterpiece of one whose heart pants, whose whole being’s but at the beck and call of her who wears a smocked petticoat, ogles with a witching eye, and should be vain that so much genius lays itself at her feet, to wit, Lady D——a W——n.”

For, taking immediate fright at his Lady’s coldness, Kennaston had ordered a post-chaise from the Brookwood Arms, and without a word of farewell to Lady Diana, save that embodied in an ode, “To Chloe When Unkind,” which her woman found pinned to Her Ladyship’s cloak when she was putting it on her shoulders the following morning, had gone to town, and just in time at the White Horse to be haled into Mr. Brummell’s party for breakfast, and to learn of the adventure with Tom Kidde, the valor of Sir Robin McTart, and the absence of that young gentleman, as also Sir Percy, from the board.

When Lady Diana’s woman hooked her mistress’s cloak about her ’twas at five o’clock in the morning, and of the party at the Castle every lady’s woman was performing the same office, adding hood over curls and puffs, and sticking the finest of cambric pocket-napkins into their mistress’ hands by the half dozens; for ’twas easily seen that such early rising could be for no other cause than to go forth to bathe their Ladyships’ faces in the May-dew; the which, when gathered from little copses and shadowy nooks before the sun had yet shone upon’t, was warranted to enhance that beauty which was already evident, and to create those charms which, alas! are occasionally lacking.

Lady Diana spelled out her lover’s verses as best she could, tripping from door to door, and calling her young companions from their mirrors; sending a footman and a page to summon the gallants who were to accompany them in their expedition, and laughing heartily as she made out more from a footman than from Kennaston’s muse that he had betaken himself to town rather than longer incur her displeasure and her frowns.

“Bless me, but my suitor’s in a fine pickle! Lud! though, I’m not disposed to have these hussies a-laying six to four on my bein’ ready to jump at his offer; still, I’d rather he’d stopped over, or else that some one most amusin’ were here; for instance Sir Robin McTart, which is not to be!”

Then a-rapping at the doors, and laughter from girlish lips; pattering of heels down the hall and stair-case; out to meet the gentlemen, bowing and complimenting on the terrace; over the lawns, and through the flower-gardens, and past the offices and stables, where Lord Brookwood, even thus early, was sunning himself in the yard, and talking over county matters with Mr. Biggs, J.P.

“Where to? Where to?” sings out His Lordship cheerily with hat in hand, and Mr. Biggs down to the ground before so much beauty, fashion and rank.

“Off to the copse, father,” calls back Diana, “to gather the May-dew and wash our faces; when we come back you must tell us all how much more beautiful we are to-day than we were yesterday!”

With which lively sally Lady Diana and the rest of ’em are crossing the hill and laughing as they pass out of sight on their two miles’ away walk to Armsleigh Copse.

Lord Brookwood is about to resume his conversation with Biggs, while the half-dozen grinning stable boys, behind His Lordship’s back, are rubbing their fists in the wet turf of a paddock, and smearing their red faces with the dew, the head-groom touching them up with a lash; when a whinny, that sets every animal in the stalls and out of ’em a-replying, sets all the cocks crowing, hens cackling, chicks peeping, dogs barking, geese squawking, smites their startled ears, and yonder, hilly-o-ho! Sirs; in a cloud of upturned soil, in a shower of splash from the river, with a thud on the wooden bridge, a bound over the stone wall of the kitchen garden; comes a black with nigh every tooth in its mouth bared, foaming, smoking, bloody; rider bent double to saddle’s bow, clinging with legs and arms.

“Homing Nell and the highwayman! Tom Kidde! Tom Kidde!”

“Homing Nell!” the shout goes up from every throat there, from His Lordship to the ’ostlers and boys.

“Tom Kidde! Tom Kidde!”

“By Gad! Sir,” cries the Earl. “I knew Nell’d come back sooner or later! Surround him. Bag him!”

Peggy hears the shouts as the ungovernable steed lunges, lurches, rears beneath her spurs and still tightly gripped reins; she takes in the situation, but not to its full import, until she now hears the voice of Biggs uplifted.

“Lord Brookwood! Lord Brookwood! mind her heels, My Lord, mind her heels! Leave the takin’ of the damned cut-purse to me and the boys!”

At the word “Brookwood,” Her Ladyship realizes that she is on the domains of Lady Diana’s father! and being mistaken for a Knight of the Road!

The latter she felt she could easily abide, and as easily refute; but the former was more than even her spent spirit could stand. So, as Biggs, His Lordship, the grooms, the stable-boys and ’ostlers and helpers all formed into a ring with whips, canes, stones and halloos to take her prisoner, she plucked up courage from the depths, and, raising herself in her saddle and her head in the air, with one superhuman tug at the bridle and prick with the steels, she made to get off! and away! But Her Ladyship’s nerve was not the equal of Homing Nell’s, nor yet to be pitted with success against the waving arms and jumping legs of a dozen stout men. With the final crack of the head-groom’s lash about her heels, with the pop in the air above her hat of Mr. Biggs’s blunderbuss, caught from the hand of one of the lads, “Homing Nell” was brought to a quivering stand-still, and My Lady Peggy to bay in the stable-yard of Brookwood Castle!

“Ha!” cries the Earl, “my pretty fellow, you’re trapped at last! The night you stole the black mare from me I shouted after you, as well as the gag at my mouth would permit, that she’d bring you no luck, and that muscles of iron wouldn’t hold her the day she made up her mind to get home.”

Peggy, glad of the use of her lungs once more, and now nigh bursting with laughter at being so glibly mistook for one of the most reckless fellows in all England, took off her hat, bowed low, and said:

“My Lord Brookwood, ’tis, I believe, I have the honor of addressing?”

“Ho! ho! ho!” Mr. Biggs, from a survey of the saddle-bow now bursts out in triumphant joyfulness.

“’Od’s blood, My Lord! but here’s luck, here’s justice, here’s what comes of my bein’ here when I am!” and Mr. Biggs now holds aloft upon the point of his stick the black mask of Master Tom Kidde, which the rogue had dropped when he was hit, and which had caught and hung by its riband from that moment to this, unseen by Lady Peg.

“Highwayman! highwayman! highwayman!” yells every lung in the place, while the whole dozen, including His Lordship and the Justice, threaten Lady Peggy with their cudgels, lashes and stones.

“I pray ye, My Lord, Gentlemen, and good fellows!” cries she, remembering now the entire history of the animal she bestrides, as rehearsed some six hours earlier by Beau Brummell and Mr. Vane. “I am no highwayman.”

A groan of derision greets this announcement.

“Nay, but the rather am I the victim of Tom Kidde, than he himself! Together with a party of my friends, being at mid-night last, on the return from a visit to Mr. Brummell’s seat, Ivy Dene, we were set upon by the rogues in the midst of Epstowe Forest; I had the luck, both good and bad, to put a ball into Tom, to get my horse shot under me, and to mount the scoundrel’s steed, the which has brought me to Your Lordship’s door, and the mare, herself, to where she belongs, it seems!”

“A damned fine story, ’fore George!” exclaims Biggs, laughing triumphantly, now holding up two watches, three rings, a diamond snuff-box, a seal, two magnificent pins, and a most splendid jeweled stomacher, high above his head in the tip of the sunshine.

“’Sdeath!” cried Lord Brookwood, seizing one of the trinkets and examining it with his spy-glass. “What’s this? ‘Percy de Bohun, Christmas from his aff. mother,’” reads His Lordship. Then another, “‘Wyatt Lovell souvenir of Italy!’ Gad, Biggs,” looking Her Ladyship over, where she still sits atop of the steaming black, “we’ve got the cursed blackguard this time! What else in his saddle pockets? aught?”

These Biggs, assisted by the head-groom, is energetically emptying of a miscellaneous collection of valuables, while Lady Peggy looks on in amazement as yet only flavored with amusement, and one more vain regret for her abandoned petticoats.

“Yes, My Lord, these thousands of pounds’ worth,” replied the Justice, holding aloft his treasure trove; “and it’ll be a short shrift for the devil, I can say that.”

“Hark ye,” now says Her Ladyship, as she recalls with a not unnatural tremor the death-warrant she had heard was lying to hand in Mr. Biggs’s pocket. “Lord Brookwood, I am no highwayman; my story is true; I am”—the words stuck in Peggy’s throat; she coughed, the stable boys tittered; then the head-groom tilted the saddle and spilled her out of it to the ground; at a word from Biggs, a couple of the men tied her, hand and foot, with a stout rope, and a pair of farming reins about her middle.

“Now who do you call yourself, my fine fellow?” says His Lordship.

“Sir Robin McTart of Robinswold, Kent!” cries Peggy, glad to be able to answer without the lie direct. “And I demand instant freedom and immunity,” cries she, tortured and quivering beneath the rude hands and ruder gibes of the grooms and ’ostlers.