to a reverie so pleasant and absorbing that he did not notice a slight
additional jar in the jolting of the carriage over the ill-paved street.
The cause of the jar was the sudden accession of two outside passengers;
one on the box beside the coachman, and the other beside the lackey
behind. Each of these functionaries, at the same instant, felt the cold
contact of a pistol against his ear, and before they could make any
outcry, the carriage was going in a different direction.
A touch of the whip sent the horses forward at breakneck speed. "Keep
quiet and you are safe," said the stranger on the box, and in a moment
he slipped over the coachman’s head a bag that served both to gag and
blindfold him. The same operation was performed simultaneously upon the
footman. Very soon, they turned sharply under an archway, and a heavy
gate was slammed behind them.
Leaving the coachman on the box, his captor got off and opened the
carriage door.
"Descend here, Lord Beachcombe," he said, holding up a lantern, which
revealed a tall man in a mask and behind him an open door.
"What is the meaning of this outrage?" demanded Beachcombe, fumbling at
his sword. The masked man, with very little ceremony, hauled him out of
the carriage, and disregarding a strenuous resistance, conducted him
into a small room, barely furnished and dimly lighted. He then saw that
his assailant was almost as richly dressed as himself, and wore a
jeweled star and other decorations of great splendor.
"What am I brought here for?" he asked, in a more subdued tone, for as
his fear of robbery subsided in these surroundings, the fact that he had
many and bitter enemies rose up before him.
"No harm unless you bring it upon yourself," replied the other. "At
worst, an hour or two’s detention and solitude and the loan of your
invitation to the duchess’ masquerade."
"Your voice sounds familiar to me," said Lord Beachcombe. "Will you not
remove your mask, now that we are alone?" The other hesitated. "Is it
worth while to keep up this mystery, Captain Freemantle? You see I
recognize you."
"Since you know me, it is not worth while," replied Robin, unmasking.
As he did so, Beachcombe whipped out his sword and rushed upon him.
Robin had no time to arm himself, but dodging the onslaught with the
agility of a cat, closed upon his assailant with a clever wrestling
trick that threw him upon his back half-stunned, and before he could
recover, had his hands securely tied behind his back with his
gold-fringed sash.
"You _would_ have it!" said Robin. "Now I can—" his eye fell upon a
packet that had fallen from Beachcombe’s hand, with the superscription
upward:
"To Mistress Larkyn,
"In care of Mine Hostess of
"The Fox and Grapes."
He picked it up and turned it over, examining the unbroken seals, and
glancing from time to time at his captive.
"So you found a traitor in the camp," he said, at last. "Let him
beware—but, tush! I know who it is; it can be no other than Samuel. I
need not interfere with him; he will find his own way to the gallows
soon enough. I’m afraid I shall have to search you, my friend. You may
as well take it quietly; you know I’m an expert at discovering hidden
treasure."
Lord Beachcombe, however, would not submit quietly, so Robin bound him
securely to a chair and instituted a rigorous search, which revealed
nothing except the emblazoned note of invitation to the ball. So,
warning his prisoner that any outcry would lead to rough treatment from
those who were left in charge of him, Robin withdrew, taking with him
the packet and the invitation, and also Beachcombe’s sword and the lamp,
and leaving him to darkness and reflection.
*CHAPTER XIV*
*A PAIR OF GLOVES*
When Robin Freemantle left Prue, she ran to the mirror and critically
examined her reflection in it.
"What a fright I look!" she exclaimed, "with my hair plastered down and
my nose red and swollen. Peggie, I should not be surprised if that man
were as disappointed with his bargain as I am with mine."
"You don’t look much like yourself," Peggie admitted frankly. "But even
as you are, you must be a great deal prettier than the sort of women a
highwayman would be used to."
"Why, Peggie, do you think—do you suppose Robin has women-thieves for
friends? Pick-pockets, perhaps—or Gipsies! Yet he looks like a
gentleman. Highwaymen are sometimes brave and chivalrous—one hears of
their doing generous things—they are not like common malefactors—"
"They get hanged, all the same," said Peggie unthinkingly.
"Oh! Peggie, you wicked, cruel creature; how dare you say such things!"
cried Prue indignantly. "Robin hanged! Never, never! I would rather go
to the queen and implore a pardon for him on my knees. Peggie, you saw
him yourself. He is handsome, is he not, and dignified? He made me feel
very much ashamed of myself; yet I hate him! I would I had never set
eyes on him! Do you suppose he despises me, Peggie?"
"I shouldn’t think he would have the impudence!" exclaimed Peggie. "A
common adventurer, if no worse."
"Adventurer, ’tis true, but which of us is not? Am I not an adventuress,
Peggie? Aye, and not so very honest a one either. Say he will rob my
Lord Bishop of his wig and my Lord Tomnoddy of his purse; what better do
I when I buy what I can not pay for, and marry a man condemned to be
hanged in order to cheat my creditors. Oh! my dear Peggie, there are
many fine folk with their noses in the air, who can not glance into a
mirror without seeing the reflection of an adventurer."
"Not a doubt of it," said Peggie philosophically. "but most people, when
they look in a mirror, see nothing there but what they want to see."
"Well, what I see is just the reverse of that," said Prue, casting a
dissatisfied glance at her own reflection, as she hurried away to rid
herself of her somber dress and release her curls from their
unaccustomed bonds. This was hardly accomplished to her satisfaction,
when Sir Geoffrey Beaudesert arrived, in a state of great excitement.
"Good morning, fair ladies," he cried, saluting them with less ceremony
than usual. "No need to ask whether you have seen this morning’s
_Courant_."
"Why not?" inquired Prue innocently.
"Because you look too happy and unconcerned to have heard the disastrous
news," he said, with a portentous air. "I grieve to be a harbinger of
misfortune."
"You alarm us," cried Prue. "What has happened? Speak!"
"Calm yourself, dearest Prudence, and remember that _I_ will not suffer
any harm to come to you." Sir Geoffrey lowered his voice to a
mysterious whisper, "The highwayman you wot of has escaped!"
"Is that all?" said Prue, with a shrug; "I thought you had news for us.
We knew that an hour ago."
"You knew it? How? Has the villain dared—"
"How did we know it?" Peggie interrupted quickly, to prevent a retort
from her cousin. "Why, the same way you did," and she displayed the
printed sheet that, adorned with a rude cut of a gallows, gave a minute
account of the morning’s executions, adding that the queen’s clemency
had been extended to Robin Freemantle, through the influence of powerful
friends in _certain quarters_, and that he had left Newgate with _great
secrecy_ late Sunday evening.
Sir Geoffrey was greatly vexed at having his surprise discounted. "I’m
glad to find you taking it so unconcernedly," he observed, looking
anything but glad. "I feared that you would be crushed by such a
calamity."
"Did you, indeed, think us bloodthirsty enough to regret the saving of a
fellow-creature’s life?" said Prue, with grave reproof. "I hoped that
you had a better opinion of our humanity."
"Humanity," echoed the baronet, with ill-dissembled irritation. "Such
angelic sentiments well become the cruel beauty whose path is strewn
with bleeding hearts. But has my dear Prudence no pity to spare for the
unhappy swain, condemned to worse than death by Robin, the highwayman’s,
unexpected good luck?"
"On the contrary," laughed Prue, "she congratulates you on your escape;
believe me, a far greater piece of luck than Robin’s."
"Do not jest, dear one, I implore you," said Sir Geoffrey seriously.
"You certainly have not considered the position this miscarriage of
justice has placed you in. Let me lay before you the consequences—"
"Pray, do not," interrupted Prue pettishly. "If I am resigned to the
will of Heaven, why persecute me with reasons for rebellion?"
Sir Geoffrey, with his hand upon his heart, bowed to the ground.
"Before such piety, I am dumb," he said. "Is it permitted to ask if you
are reconciled to your creditors as well as to the means you took to rid
yourself of them?"
"It is not," replied Prue with overpowering dignity. "That is my
private affair and I do not care to discuss it, even with Sir Geoffrey
Beaudesert. By the by, Sir Geoffrey"—with an entire change of tone and
manner—"you always know the latest news; do tell us why Mrs. Tewkesbury
has gone home to her father, and whether her husband is going to fight a
duel or will merely horsewhip her hair-dresser?"
The conversation drifted into safer channels, and Prue was soon her own
bright, frivolous, enchanting self. Other guests dropped in; fashion,
scandal, and the duchess’ masquerade were discussed, and Prue had a
saucy answer for every compliment and a ready laugh for every jest, and
beneath her dainty bodice such a tumult of fear and shame and sharp
sense of defeat, and withal such strange, swift stabs of something that
was not pain, and yet hurt her more than all the other emotions that
quickened her pulse and sent the blood surging through her brain.
It was late in the afternoon, and Prue’s guests were making their
adieux, when Robin’s messenger came—a rustic-looking youth with a ruddy
complexion and a shock of tow-colored hair. He was dressed like the
footboy of a prosperous tradesman, and carried an oilskin covered
basket—and of a surety bore no resemblance to the crippled beggar who
had followed Robin so persistently on his way to the conference in
Lincoln’s Inn.
Yet it was the same man.
With an air of dense stupidity, he evaded such questions as James
deigned to put to him, and reiterated his petition for a personal
interview with Lady Prudence Brooke, for whom he had a message that was
to be delivered to her, and to her alone. James, scenting a discreet but
persistent dun, bade him wait in the library, and conveyed his request
to Prue with the same air of respectful condolence with which he would
have announced any other calamity. Although he disapproved of her youth
and frivolity, James would have yielded to none in admiration of his
beautiful young mistress, whom he had carried in his arms as a baby and
conspired with every other member of Lady Drumloch’s household to
indulge, spoil and flatter from the first hour that her blue eyes had
opened on a world full of her adorers.
"A young man is waiting below, my Lady. He has a message for you which
he will not send up. I told him you were engaged, but he said he would
wait until you were at leisure."
"What sort of a young man, James? Does he look as if he came for
money?" Prue asked. "You know most of my duns better than I do."
"He is a stranger to me, my Lady, but it is likely he may be a lawyer’s
clerk in disguise."
"I will see him, James; bring him up here," she interrupted.
"The hair-dresser is here; shall I tell him to wait?" inquired James.
"No; send him up-stairs. Peggie, go and have your hair dressed first,
and by that time I will be ready."
She was alone when the young man was shown in. "You want to see me?"
she said, as soon as the door was shut. "You come to fetch something,
do you not?"
"The captain told me—" he began, then stopped and stared mutely at her.
"Well, what did the captain tell you?" she demanded impatiently.
"He told me I should see the most beautiful lady in the whole world, and
that I should know her for the Lady Prudence Brooke, without asking her
name," said the lad.
"Your captain is a fool!" cried Prue. But, try as hard as she might to
look indignant, she blushed divinely and a furtive smile played
hide-and-seek among her dimples. Of all Prue’s many charms there was
none to equal her smile. It was, perhaps, on that account that she
smiled often and so maintained a reputation for good-nature that lured
many an unsuspecting victim into disaster.
"That he is!" cried the messenger heartily. "For he said he’d done this
beautiful lady a great injury, but for all that he would trust his
life—and more than that—in her hands. Can any man be a worse fool than
to trust a woman so far as that?"
"Said he that, in very truth?" asked Prue, turning very pale.
"Aye, and other things just as foolish," said the man, with the same
stupid air of rusticity. "Will it please your ladyship to give me what
the captain left with you?"
She brought out the white silken packet from its hiding-place among the
laces of her bodice, and held it out to him. "Tell your captain from
me," she said disdainfully, "that I scarce know which is the greater
fool—he or his messenger."
The man laughed very heartily, and having bestowed the packet safely,
opened his basket and took out a parcel and a letter. "The captain bade
me present these to your ladyship," he said, and was bowing himself out,
when she stopped him hurriedly.
"I forget the captain’s address," she said; "I might want to—to send a
message to him."
"Any time your ladyship wants to send to him, a word to Steve Larkyn, at
Pip’s Coffee-house, Essex Street, Strand, will find your ladyship’s
humble servant, who will be most honored by any commands you lay upon
him," said the man. And before she could speak again, had disappeared.
Prue opened the parcel, which contained a long, narrow box of perfumed
wood, lined with pink sarsenet. The next moment, she was flying
up-stairs, two at a time, in her haste to display the contents to her
cousin.
[Illustration: Prue opened the parcel.]
"Look, Peggie, did you ever see anything half so lovely?" she cried,
holding out for her inspection a pair of long silk gloves as filmy as a
cobweb and exquisitely embroidered with seed-pearls.
Peggie dared not move her head, for the coiffeur was busy with his
tongs, but she rolled her eyes round until she saw the gloves, and then
rolled them up as far as they would go to emphasize her one word of
admiration, "Incomparable!"
Prue drew on one of the gloves. It was so elastic, and yet so clinging,
that it clasped her slender fingers like another skin, giving them even
a more tapering and delicate appearance than usual. She did not open her
letter until she was alone in her own room, and then, tearing off the
cover with more eagerness than she would have cared to own, found
nothing inside but ten crisp, new Bank of England notes for one hundred
pounds each.
She dropped them as though they had been so many adders, and a flush of
anger rose to her cheek. "I suppose he has been waylaying and robbing
some one!" she said half-aloud, "and hugs himself to think he can buy me
with stolen money! Oh! he is just as base as the rest—"
There was a movement in the other room, so Prue snatched up the
bank-notes and crumpled them into her jewel-box. Not even to Peggie did
she wish to confide this fresh instance of Robin’s turpitude.
*CHAPTER XV*
*THE RED DOMINO*
Fashionable hours were early in the days of Queen Anne, and it was a
well-known fact that the imperious Sarah Churchill did not easily pardon
the slight of unpunctuality at her entertainments. So by nine o’clock
the gorgeous drawing-rooms were well-filled and the steady stream of
rank and beauty poured up the great staircase as fast as chariots and
chairs could discharge their glittering loads.
The sight was a dazzling one; every nationality, every celebrity was
represented. Cardinals paid court to Gipsies, Charlemagne and Henry the
Eighth contended for the favor of Helen of Troy, and in front of the
dais upon which the duchess stood unmasked, to receive her guests, an
endless procession passed, of monks and devils, kings and clowns,
swashbucklers, nuns, fairies, princesses, allegorical and mythological
personages—a veritable phantasmagoria, in which the mask and domino
afforded just as much concealment as the wearer desired, but no more.
A ripple of laughter or a murmur of admiration at frequent intervals
announced the arrival of some specially brilliant or humorous masker,
and when the crowd was at its densest, a couple approached the dais,
followed by a stream of hilarious compliments.
Foremost came Prue, dressed as a shepherdess. Over a skirt of her
grandmother’s priceless lace, she wore a Watteau dress of white silk,
brocaded with bunches of rosebuds and forget-me-nots, and coquettishly
perched upon her luxuriant curls was a little straw hat, adorned with a
wreath of roses and a flowing knot of blue ribbon. The
pearl-embroidered gloves covered her hands, in one of which she carried
a crook all laced with fluttering ribbons, and in the other a silken
cord, by which she led Peggie, admirably disguised as a lamb; of
gigantic growth, to be sure, but delightfully and gracefully grotesque
as she ambled and pranced beside the little shepherdess, who at every
other step, stopped to caress and encourage her.
The little procession was so irresistibly funny that the duchess, at
first rather disturbed by the rising tide of laughter and applause, as
soon as she set eyes upon the cause of it, joined in with the utmost
heartiness, and even the queen, who sat beside her in a chair of state,
vouchsafed a smile of genuine amusement, rare enough upon the face of
that woman of few emotions.
Dancing was going on in the great ball-room, but Prue refused to dance.
"I dare not leave my lamb at the mercy of all these wolves," she
declared, in a falsetto voice that deceived no one. "Is there no grassy
nook where I can repose, while my pet frolics round me?"
"Certainly," said a voice, which she recognized as Sir Geoffrey’s.
"There are secluded retreats in the conservatories sacred to Chloris and
her flock—"
"Including Strephon? No, thank you," and warning him off with her
crook, she roamed about, launching the harmless arrows of her ready wit
against such of the guests as she recognized, or pretended to.
Presently a voice began to murmur close behind her—
"Her hair,
In ringlets rather dark than fair,
Does down her ivory bosom roll,
And hiding half, adorn the whole.
In her high forehead’s fair half-round
Love sits in open triumph crown’d.
Her lips, no living bard, I weet,
May say how red, how round, how sweet—"
"Oh! hush!" cried Prue, in a great flutter; "how could you be so rash?
You will be recognized." She turned a quick, timid glance backward, and
was promptly reassured. The tall, stately figure, picturesquely draped
in a voluminous red domino, had nothing about it to attract attention,
and a red mask with a deep fall of gold-lace concealed the entire face,
except the firm mouth and strong, square chin.
"What made you come here, of all places in the world?" she asked.
"Chiefly to see you, but partly because I had business here," he
answered.
Poor Prue thought of the bank-notes, and almost collapsed. What
business could a highwayman have at a ball unless to rob the guests
while pretending to be one of them? Just then Peggie drew her attention
by pulling at the cord.
"For Heaven’s sake," she whispered, "come out of this crowd. I am so
hot, muffled in this sheepskin, I shall die if I don’t get to the air."
Prue signed to Robin to follow, and led her lambkin away. Outside the
ball-room, they were soon in comparative solitude. In the card-rooms a
few elderly people had thrown off their masks and given themselves over
to the full enjoyment of whist and écarté. Here and there a tête-à-tête
was progressing behind the kindly shelter of albums or portfolios. In
the library a sedate couple mused side by side over the latest number of
the _Spectator_, upside down, while two or three portly, be-starred and
be-ribboned fogies discussed the threatened Jacobite uprising over an
exclusive bottle of Burgundy.
Prue was at home in every corner of Marlborough House, and had no
difficulty in piloting her companions into a cool, dim-lighted
conservatory, where the sound of voices and music reached the ear
agreeably softened by distance.
"Every one has seen me," said Peggie; "I’ll get rid of this sheepskin,
and then I can dance."
"Peggie would rather dance than eat, sleep or go to church," remarked
Prue, seating herself and making a little, half-hesitating,
half-inviting movement toward the seat beside her.
Robin was not slow in availing himself of the opportunity. There was
something in Prue’s manner that allured him, while it kept him at a
distance. He longed to take her in his arms as he had done once; yet he
dared not touch her hand.
"I am glad to have an opportunity of speaking to you," she said,
removing her mask. "You sent me something to-day—"
"Yes—oh! you don’t know how happy you have made me by wearing them," he
said earnestly.
"Ah! yes," she started and looked down at the gloves; "they are
beautiful—just the very thing for my dress, too. But that was not what
I meant."
A deep flush burned his face under the mask. "I beg and implore you not
to speak of anything else I sent," he said, in a low, tremulous voice.
"Let me deceive myself into the belief that you acknowledge _that_, at
least, as my rightful privilege."
She raised her lovely eyes to his with a puzzled expression, then
dropped them, a little embarrassed. "We will not discuss that," she
said, "but unfortunately I can not avoid speaking about the money,
because—you see, I can not help knowing that you—that perhaps—that
perhaps it honestly belongs to somebody else and you have no right to
give it to me. There!" She looked apprehensively at him, fearing an
outburst of rage, but he was quite calm, and the mask concealed any
change of countenance.
"You are very scrupulous," he said coldly.
"Oh! I know you had no reason to expect honesty from me!" she
exclaimed, with a touch of temper in her voice. "But when you threw
your purse to me in the carriage, I had no opportunity of returning it
and I never expected to see you again. Besides, you took mine and—and—"
She glanced at him out of the tail of her eye, but he did not accept the
challenge. "You think, perhaps," she went on, quite angrily now, "that
I have done a much worse thing for money than ever you did; but if I
have married a robber—"
"Stop, stop!" he said authoritatively. "If you must say these things
about yourself, it shall not be to me. Insult _me_ as much as you
please, but do not accuse me of daring to blame you for anything you
have done, or could do. Tell me, if I assure you that that money is my
very own, will you take my word for it?"
She hesitated and softened. "Tell me truly—in what way your own? Do
not fear to trust me."
"Trust you! Do you not know that you could charm any secrets of my own
from me by a kind word? But this is no secret; it is the price of my
birthright, received in honest sale and barter over a lawyer’s table.
You _will_ believe me, won’t you?"
She put out both her hands, with a gesture of enchanting frankness. "I
will believe anything you tell me," she said; "I know you would not
deceive me."
He took the two little fluttering hands in his, and raised them one
after another to his lips.
"I see you are not wearing a sling," she remarked. "Is your arm
healed?"
"It was nothing; a broken collar-bone is quickly cured," he said
carelessly, though delighted by even so slight a token of interest from
her. "Besides, the person whose domino I borrowed, does not wear his
arm in a sling, and I do not wish any difference to be remarked when he
resumes it."
"Then you are here in some one else’s disguise?" she said quickly.
"What will you do when we unmask?"
"At midnight the right face will be found under this mask," he replied.
"What fun it would be!" she cried, with reckless gaiety, "if you were to
stay until midnight and unmask with the rest! I wonder if any one would
recognize you."
"If the experiment will amuse you, I will stay and try it," said Robin
tranquilly.
Her own voice dropped almost to a whisper. "To amuse me?" she murmured.
"What do you suppose would happen?"
"Probably nothing at all; I am not so well known. At the worst, they
would merely arrest me," he said.
"Merely arrest you! and send you back to—prison, I suppose?"
"Why, ’tis likely; and then, in a few days, you would be free—to marry
some one you love."
"I have had enough of marrying," she said petulantly. "Besides, had I
loved one man, I would not have married another, even in jest."