until I interrupted her. For, "Extraordinary creature!" I pleaded, "you will rouse the house."
"I don't care! I intend to be a Jacobite if you are one!"
"Eh, well," said I, "Frank Audaine is not the man to coerce his wife in a political matter. Nevertheless, I know of a certain Jacobite who is not unlikely to have a bad time of it if by any chance Lord Humphrey recognized him to-night. Nay, Miss, you may live to be a widow yet."
"But he didn't recognize you. And if he did"--she snapped her fingers,--"why, we'll fight him again, you and I. Won't we, my dear? For he stole our secret, you know. And he stole me, too. Very pretty behavior, wasn't it?" And here Miss, Allonby stamped the tiniest, the most infinitesimal of red-heeled slippers.
"The rogue he didna keep me lang, To budge we made him fain again--
"that's you, Frank, and your great, long sword. And now:
"We'll hang him high, upon a tree, And King Frank shall hae his ain again!"
Afterward my adored Dorothy jumped from the footstool, and came toward me, lifting up the crimson trifle that she calls her mouth, "So take your own, my king," she breathed, with a wonderful gesture of surrender.
_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 3, 1750_
"_I am thinking if some little, filching, inquisitive poet should get my story, and represent it to the stage, what those ladies who are never precise but at a play would say of me now,--that I were a confident, coming piece, I warrant, and they would damn the poor poet for libelling the sex._"
COLONEL DENSTROUDE, } SIR GRESLEY CARNE, } Gentlemen of the town. MR. BABINGTON-HERLE, }
VANRINGHAM, a play-actor and a Jacobite emissary.
MISS ALLONBY, an heiress, loves Captain Audaine.
BENYON, MINCHIN, and OTHER SERVANTS to Ormskirk.
Tunbridge Wells, shifting from Ormskirk's lodgings at the _Mitre_ to Vanringham's apartments in the _Three Gudgeons_.
_PROEM.--To Explain Why the Heroine of This Comedy Must Wear Her Best_
I quit pilfering from the writings of Francis Audaine, since in the happenings which now concern us he plays but a subsidiary part. The Captain had an utter faith in decorum, and therefore it was, as he records, an earth-staggering shock when the following day, on the Pantiles, in full sight of the best company at the Wells, Captain Audaine was apprehended. He met disaster like an old acquaintance, and hummed a scrap of song--"_O, gin I were a bonny bird_,"--and shrugged; but when Miss Allonby, with whom he had been chatting, swayed and fell, the Captain caught her in his arms, and standing thus, turned angrily upon the emissaries of the law.