“Do you?” says Lady Peggy, mystified beyond everything. “Did she look as you expected her to?”
“Ah!” gasps Sir Robin, “she has not yet lifted her mask for me to behold her countenance, but when she returns, I shall beseech her for one glimpse!”
“Ah!” returns Peggy, now fully persuaded that some one has been making a jest of her companion, but none the less disquieted on her own score.
“Hark ye, Sir Robin,” says she, “you have ever found my counsels wise. Be advised by me now; leave Vauxhall at once. Lady Peggy Burgoyne is not safe, so long as you tarry here.”
The little Baronet, doughtily, although trembling, puts his hand to his hilt.
“Nay, Sir!” continues Peg, “your weapon would not avail for her preservation. She leaves town this very night for Kennaston. Do you the same, nor risk detection longer here.” Her Ladyship uses the word advisedly, and has the satisfaction of seeing Sir Robin shiver with terror, then steady again as he reflects that Her Ladyship’s fears can but be in connection with her own escapade; since, ’tis plain from all he can spy and eavesdrop, not a soul as yet has missed Sir Percy de Bohun from his accustomed haunts.
“But she swore me she’d be back in a few moments, Mr. Incognito, and ’sdeath! Sir!” perceiving Lady Biddy emerging from the box and advancing toward the lion alone, “there she is!”
Off and away Sir Robin McTart to join his Fair, while Lady Peggy, screened by the increasing shadows, for the dripping lamps are one by one, by this, dying down in their globes, beholds one—she devines not which—of Beau Brummell’s lady guests, courtesying and greeting the Baronet with her finger-tips.
Now My Lady’s heart’s a-thumping monstrous hard; she beholds, as well as Sir Robin and his supposed Peggy, two others—alas! she knows too well who they are, a-peeping out from the corner of the box-entrance whence Lady Biddy came just now, and watching her encounter with Sir Robin.
Together? Aye and a-goin’ to be “together” for all their lives, she sadly thinks, both of them, quite forgetting, save perchance for a moment’s beguilement, her very existence. But it behooves her, if not for her own sake, of which she has come to the pass of recking but little, then for her father’s and mother’s, now to bid farewell forever to disguises, falsehoods, cheatings, man’s estate, and even the melancholy chance of seeing the countenance of Sir Percy. She will off presently, and reach home as best she may.