with exaggerated politeness and inquiring after his health with a
solicitude that Lord Beachcombe did not attempt to reciprocate. The
wound he had received from Sir Geoffrey’s sword was slight enough to be
patched up with a few strips of court-plaster; the wound to his vanity
still gaped. He looked on with a sardonic smile while Sir Geoffrey,
pressing several impassioned kisses upon Prue’s reluctant hand, bade her
"a brief adieu," and slowly backed himself to the door.
"I trust I am not driving Sir Geoffrey Beaudesert away," said Beachcombe
stiffly.
"By no means," cried Prue with alacrity. "Sir Geoffrey was taking his
leave when you entered. Sir Geoffrey, farewell. No doubt we shall meet
at Lady Rialton’s, or elsewhere, later in the day; our world is so
small, we can not get away from one another even for an hour; don’t you
find it sometimes grows monotonous, Lord Beachcombe?"
As the door closed upon the parting guest, Beachcombe approached her
with an air of distant respect, bowing profoundly, with his hand upon
his breast.
"Pardon this intrusion, Lady Prudence, and permit me to lay my homage at
your feet," he said.
Prue curtsied again. "Pray, my Lord, do not wound me by apologizing for
a friendly visit," she returned, with a sweet smile. "Be seated, and
let me offer you a cup of chocolate."
The little torment had jumped quickly to the conclusion that some motive
of strong personal interest had brought her old lover to the house he
had never entered since, scarcely a year ago, their troth had been
broken with bitter words and thinly veiled insults on both sides. Her
quick intuition warned her that his visit might, very possibly, add
another snarl to the tangle in which she felt herself becoming
hopelessly enmeshed. So she exerted all her tact and skill to keep him
on tenter-hooks, and give herself time to gather her forces, while she
discussed frothy scandals and airy nothings, pretending not to notice
his lack of response and ill-repressed impatience, until suddenly she
turned full upon him her clear and dazzling glance and changed her
tactics without a moment’s warning.
"But I had forgotten," she said, "how little you care about scandal and
poetry, and I can scarcely flatter myself that my frivolous conversation
can be very entertaining to you. My tongue runs away with me sadly,
doesn’t it? I dare say you remember of old what a chatterbox I am.
Well," with a sudden change of tone, "now tell me what really brought
you to see me?"
Her abrupt question had the intended effect of confusing her visitor and
throwing him off his guard, while her ingenuous smile disarmed him.
"Your conversation is delightful at all times, Lady Prudence," he began
hurriedly; "so much information—such—ah—intimate knowledge of
society—and literature is as rare as it is agreeable. Nothing should I
enjoy so much, if I did not have my head so full of a subject
which—a—private family affair—which—which—"
He trailed off helplessly, and she let him flounder until his
embarrassment ceased to amuse her. Then she said quietly:
"How can _I_ be of any assistance to you, Lord Beachcombe, in a private
family affair? That seems quite out of my province."
"Alas! I am but too well aware that I have forfeited all right to ask
favors of you, Viscountess," he pleaded, "but I know your generous
nature so well that I am emboldened to cast myself upon your mercy."
"You flatter me!" she cried, with her dazzling smile. "What can my
generosity and mercy do for Lord Beachcombe?"
"I scarcely know. ’Tis but an idea; a mere catching at a straw. Still,
I have been credibly informed that you were decoyed last night to the
den of Robin Freemantle, the highway-robber, whence, with unparalleled
courage, you rescued the queen’s necklace—"
"Surely," she interrupted, with some impatience, "Her Majesty’s necklace
can not be your private family affair?"
He laughed explosively. "Is nothing sacred to you, Lady Prudence? I
only wished to felicitate you upon your most remarkable adventure, and
its brilliant result, and to implore you to tell me if you found any
papers or documents in the—the place where the necklace was hidden."
"Was the necklace hidden anywhere?" she inquired, in a tone of surprise.
"I did not find it; it was given to me—"
"By Robin Freemantle—is it not so?" he eagerly interrupted.
"Robin Freemantle! What could make you imagine that he gave it to me?"
she cried, in an accent of intense astonishment.
"My dear Viscountess, surely you are aware that this rascal, disguised
in my mask and domino, followed you the whole evening of the
masquerade-ball—"
"Is it possible?" cried Prue, with the prettiest imaginable air of
incredulity. "La! what strange things happen at a masquerade!"
"Possible? ’Tis a fact," replied Beachcombe; "and ’tis easy to
understand that having fallen madly in love with you—"
"The outrageous monster!" shrieked Prue.
"Even monsters are human, dear Viscountess, and who can wonder that the
beauty that has wrought such havoc in my—in our—-in all beholders,
should have smitten this fellow, who is reported to have shadowed your
footsteps all Monday night, disguised in a red domino and mask. That
mask and domino were mine, and he robbed me of them in the same house by
the river-side where you were taken last night. A den of thieves,
Viscountess, from which your escape unharmed was hardly less than a
miracle."
"My escape? Nobody attempted to detain me. In fact I saw no one, and
the only danger I escaped was of being taken prisoner by the soldiers
who came to search for—rebels, I understood them to say."
"Rebels! Ha! ha! ’tis true, this jailbird has the audacity to mix
himself up with Jacobite plots and claim that he only steals purses on
the chance of their containing papers of value to the Pretender’s cause!
Speaking of papers brings me back to my own affairs. When this villain
stole my domino, he also robbed me of a packet of papers. He returned
the domino—after putting it to the use you wot of—but the papers, of
great value, he refused to give up. Is it possible, dear Lady Prudence,
that while you were in this robber’s den, you saw such a packet?"
Prue shook her head. "The soldiers took everything they could find in
the place," she said reflectively. "If I were you, I would make
inquiries of them."
"I have done so," he said; "but they brought away no such packet."
"Perhaps it was opened and they have the contents."
"I have reason to think that unlikely," replied Beachcombe, biting his
lips and scowling.
"Or destroyed?" she suggested.
"No, indeed; if I could hope for that—!"
"What, hope for the destruction of valuable private papers? It is not
to you, then, that they are valuable?" she cried shrewdly.
He started and eyed her suspiciously for a moment. "To no one else," he
replied emphatically; "but you can surely understand, Lady Prudence,
that some family documents would be better destroyed than in the hands
of—an enemy."
"Was Rob—Captain Freemantle—your enemy?" she asked ingenuously. "It
seems to me that some one—who can it have been?—said he was your
relative. He calls himself De Cliffe, doesn’t he?"
Lord Beachcombe looked at her again with growing mistrust. "Did he have
the impudence to call himself De Cliffe, when he addressed you at the
ball, Viscountess?" he demanded.
"La! no; and if he had—people can say anything behind a mask, without
fear of being believed," she retorted, laughing. "I recollect now that
’twas Barbara Sweeting, when she told us of the loss of the queen’s
necklace. She told us how you had obtained his pardon when condemned to
be hanged, and afterward set the soldiers upon him—"
Beachcombe bent his sullen glance upon the carpet, tracing out its faded
pattern with his Malacca cane. "Every family has its painful secrets,
Lady Prudence," he began, "and this packet contains one of the De Cliffe
family secrets—a painful one, but not important—oh—not at all important.
Had the soldiers found it, it would have been an easy matter to recover
it—a few guineas at most—but if it is still in his possession—"
"What like was it?" Prue inquired listlessly, for she was growing weary
of a subject that had so little of personal interest for her.
"The packet? Oh! a small thing, about the size and appearance of a
letter—a _billet-doux_"—he forced a laugh—"sealed and addressed to
Mistress—Mistress—the name has escaped me for the moment, but ’twas in
care of the Hostess of the _Fox and Grapes_."
A sudden glow of color swept across Prue’s face. In her joy at finding
that the source of many a jealous pang was not Robin’s after all, it is
to be feared that she quite overlooked the gravity of Lord Beachcombe’s
accusation. What did it matter to her, whose letter it was—if it were
not Robin’s—written to another woman? She had an impulse to return it,
and her hand involuntarily rose to the laces about her neck, where she
had kept it concealed except when she thrust it under her pillow, where
it lay all night pervading her dreams.
She checked herself quickly, though not quite unobserved. Beachcombe,
of course, did not suspect anything so preposterous as that Prue could
be interested in the highwayman, beyond the fact that he had made her
the heroine of a successful escapade, but her change of countenance,
slight as it was, and her gesture, though instantly diverted to a
readjustment of the rose at her breast, did not escape his keen eye.
"You recognize the superscription?" he suggested insinuatingly. "You
saw the packet in his hands, perhaps? If—so—"
"If so," she interrupted quickly, "you have little chance of recovering
it, since ’tis said he was drowned last night."
"If I could only believe that true!" he exclaimed fiercely. "But no! he
escaped; there can be no doubt of that; in fact I have reason to know—"
"To know that he is safe!" she cried, in a thrilling accent of
unmistakable joy. "Oh! Heaven—" then suddenly she remembered that this
man was his enemy and desired his death. She stopped short and then
went on hurriedly, conscious that she had betrayed herself—"Is it
possible that this—this miscreant is still alive and at liberty?"
He looked at her dubiously, but although a growing suspicion that she
was acting a part disturbed him, it did not yet enlighten him with any
ray of the truth.
"I am as sure of it, as I am that he pursued you at the ball, under
cover of my domino—and, for his punishment, fell in love with you," he
said boldly.
"Fell in love with me!" cried Prue disdainfully. "Again, sir? How dare
you suggest such presumption!"
"The fellow certainly does not lack presumption," replied Beachcombe,
"and as to his having fallen in love with you, did he not prove his
infatuation by surrendering his priceless booty for the sake of seeing
you once more, even at the peril of his life? Believe me, dear
Viscountess, the man who will risk so much, will risk still more; you
have not seen the last of Captain Freemantle."
"You think not?" cried Prue. "What do you suppose he will do next?"
"Probably he will repeat the tactics that he has already pursued with
such enviable success," said the earl, with a scarcely perceptible
sneer, "and send one of his followers to your ladyship to beseech
another interview; or perhaps he will come to you himself."
"Heaven forbid!" cried Prue. "I trust he will not attempt anything
so—so audacious."
"On the contrary, my dear lady," replied Beachcombe blandly, "if you
will be guided by me, I think we can turn this fellow’s impudence to our
mutual advantage. _I_ most sincerely trust that he will come or send to
you, because now he has been routed out of his house by the river-side,
we no longer know where he is in hiding. He is not like to return
there, but gentlemen of his profession have many haunts, and having
induced your ladyship to visit one of them, he will, no doubt, try
another."
"You seem to forget that there is only one queen’s necklace," she cried
incautiously. Then, conscious of her indiscretion, she added with too
eager precipitation, "Besides, Robin Freemantle had nothing to do with
my visit to that house; I was guided there—"
"By a messenger sent by him, as I understand," interrupted Beachcombe.
"’Tis no secret that your ladyship was induced by means of a letter—"
"Secret! I should think not!" she cried petulantly, tossing the letter
upon the table beside him. "All the town seems talking about it, and all
the world may read it, for aught I care! I defy the most ingenious
scandal-monger to make anything out of it."
Lord Beachcombe took it up, and slowly unfolding it, read it carefully,
and then looked up with a smile of triumph, that struck a sudden chill
to Prue’s heart. From his breast he drew a letter addressed to "The
Right Honorable Lord Beachcombe. At Rodney House, Saint James’ Park,
London," and placing the two papers side by side, contemplated them with
vindictive satisfaction.
"There can be no further doubt," he said. "See for yourself,
Viscountess, the writing is identical."
She looked, and had some difficulty in maintaining her indifference.
Furious at herself for having given Beachcombe an opportunity to confirm
his suspicions, she had just enough self-command left to see that it was
a case of _qui s’excuse s’accuse_, and that any attempt at explanation
would only plunge her into an inextricable tangle of falsehood. So she
merely remarked, in as casual a tone as she could assume, "La me! how
curious!" and stretched out her hand for her own document.
Beachcombe withheld it. "Pray permit me to retain this, Lady Prudence,"
he entreated. "It is an important piece of evidence."
"More important to me than to your lordship!" she retorted sharply. "Be
good enough to return it to me!" and as he still hesitated, she snatched
it from his grasp, exclaiming with an angry laugh, "Evidently the liking
for other people’s ’private papers’ runs in the blood of the De
Cliffes."
With a savage scowl, Lord Beachcombe half-rose from his seat. But Prue
had already recovered from her spurt of passion, and with the prettiest
deprecating gesture and the most alluring smile she could call up at a
moment’s notice, she stemmed the tide of his wrath.
"Oh! forgive me, Lord Beachcombe," she said sweetly. "I am not used to
be so cross-questioned and my temper, as you know well, is none of the
most patient. Do not let us quarrel over such a trifle as a fancied
resemblance between two scraps of writing."
"’Tis no fancied resemblance, Lady Prudence, said Beachcombe doggedly.
"Then if it is a real one, would it not be better for us to see how we
can turn it to our mutual advantage, than to wrangle over it?" she
suggested. Beachcombe’s brow cleared at her conciliatory tone, and his
half-awakened suspicions melted under the influence of a sweet and
beaming smile.
"There is nothing easier than to turn it to our advantage and his
destruction, dear Viscountess, if you will be guided by me," he said
eagerly. "If Captain Freemantle should make another attempt to see
you—as I feel convinced he will—surely woman’s wit can manage to bring
us face to face, or at least to let me know where he is to be found. I
am convinced that I could show him excellent reasons for giving up those
papers, which would prove dangerously compromising—to him—if discovered
in his possession. You could secure yourself from further molestation
and promote the ends of justice in this way, and place me under a
lifelong obligation."
"And how about Captain Freemantle?" suggested Prue. "Would his
obligation to me also be lifelong?"
"Why—no doubt," he replied, with a sinister smile.
"Well, Lord Beachcombe," said Prue, with a charming smile, "I will give
your message to this Knight of the Road—_when_ I see him—and I doubt not
he will wait upon your lordship to receive the benefits you are so
anxious to bestow upon him. Oh! you need not thank me" (he had no
intention of doing so); "I am always glad to oblige an old friend. And
pray do not hurry away; I hear the voice of my gossip, Barbara Sweeting,
and presently the rest of London will flock round me to repeat what
every one is saying about me, and find out something new to tell in
their turn. You, who have given me so much information, can help me to
entertain them."
*CHAPTER XXII*
*IN A CHAIRMAN’S LIVERY*
Lady Barbara rustled into the room in the most expansive of hoops and
the loftiest of heads of lace and feathers, the height, literally, of
the mode.
"Prue, you sly minx, I have come to give you the scolding you deserve,"
she began, and half-mirthful, half-reproachful, was about to embrace her
when her glance fell upon Lord Beachcombe. She started back and turned
her eyes from one to the other with exaggerated disapproval, behind
which lurked the excitement of the keen hunter on a promising trail.
Beachcombe’s dark face flushed with an embarrassment that he vainly
attempted to conceal under the elaborate politeness of his greeting, but
Prue, all innocent smiles, and thoroughly enjoying a situation which put
her inquisitor to confusion, flew into her dear friend’s arms.
"How are you, dearest Bab?" she cried. "I am simply perishing for a
long, long talk with you. Oh! I have _so_ much to tell you—"
"Not so much as you think, perhaps, wicked one," retorted Barbara, still
reproachfully, "but I own I am dying for the key to your mysterious
adventures."
"Have you, too, come to cross-question me about last night?" cried Prue
petulantly. "Before I was out of my bed, the house was besieged. Ah!
here is Peggie, who can tell you more about my visitors than I can, for
half of them came while I was yet asleep."
"’Tis not your visitors I want to hear about, Prue, but yourself. To
think, that with such a frolic to the fore, my Prue should have left me
without a hint of what was happening! How can I ever forgive it?"
"Lady Brooke should be pardoned all things for the sake of her heroism,"
said Beachcombe, with cold irony. "Yet it seems a pity that she should
have braved alone the dangers so many of her friends would willingly
have shared."
"You too?" cried Barbara, raising hands and eyes appealingly to the
offended heavens. "Can neither matrimony nor paternity cure the
Prue-fever?—nor even phlebotomy at the hands of so skilful a chirurgeon
as Sir Geoffrey Beaudesert? Pray, if one may venture to inquire, what
may be your interest in the recovery of the queen’s necklace, since
surely it can not be either friendship or love?"
The look he gave her certainly suggested neither of these emotions, but
his voice was under better control.
"My interest, dear Lady Barbara, is so far selfish that as the robbery
was perpetrated under cover of my domino, I should certainly have wished
to take part in the finding of the jewel—and the thief."
"La!" cried Barbara, smiling enigmatically. "How unfortunate that the
necklace has been returned and the thief arrested without your
assistance!"
"Arrested!" her auditors exclaimed together, but in very different
tones. Lord Beachcombe’s vibrated with gratified hatred, Prue’s
trembled with dismay. The color dropped from her cheek, and but for
Peggie’s promptitude, her agitation would have betrayed her beyond
concealment. She, however, had been hovering on the threshold trying to
attract her cousin’s attention, and now ran forward with great vivacity,
and by a torrent of eager questions, drew attention to herself and gave
Prue time to recover from her perturbation, though not before it had
been observed with malicious inference by Lord Beachcombe.
"Why, truly, I scarcely expected to bring news to the fountain-head,"
Barbara ran on. "Yet ’tis a fact, my poor Prue, that your romance has a
very commonplace finale. ’Tis no dashing exploit of a bold highwayman,
after all, no hairbreadth escape from a robber’s den, but merely the
outcome of an intrigue between a chambermaid and a scrivener’s clerk;
and a fit of vulgar jealousy has pricked the bubble of your romance, my
love!"
Greatly to the astonishment of both her visitors, Prue’s face, instead
of falling in dismay, became irradiated with the loveliest expression of
joy. Her eyes, softly luminous, swam in a rapturous mist and dimples
played in the damask that suddenly drove the pallor from her cheek.
Such a transformation could hardly fail to astonish even those most
accustomed to the swift variations of this creature of caprice.
"Tell us quickly, dear Barbara," she cried, with a little tremolo of
excitement in her voice. "You know ’twas near midnight when the duchess
brought me home, and I was so tired I slept until noon—all my visitors
this morning have come to seek information—not to impart it. Do, pray,
tell me what has happened."
"La! Prue, I thought you would be mortified to death at such a tame
ending to your romantic adventure, and you seem delighted," replied
Barbara, with pique. "One of the serving-wenches at Marlborough House,
finding the royal tiring-room for a moment unguarded, took her
sweetheart in, and not content with gazing, they must needs carry their
audacity to the point of fingering Her Majesty’s toilet-articles, and so
came upon the necklace in its case, which so dazzled them, I presume,
that they turned crazy, and hearing voices at one door, ran out of
another and found themselves back in the servants’ quarters with the
necklace in their possession. The girl swears they did not mean to
steal it, but did not know how to get it back unobserved, and finally
the lover, in a panic, fled from the house, carrying the perilous pelf
with him."
"A probable story, indeed!" cried Beachcombe scoffingly. "It might
account for the disappearance of the jewel, but scarcely for its
restoration."
"Oh! that was a case of conscience, a thing quite incomprehensible of
course to an ’_esprit fort_,’ such as your lordship," retorted Barbara.
"The girl suffered tortures, it appears, during which she was a dozen
times on the point of confessing, but hesitated for fear of
incriminating her lover. Then came the story of the return of the
necklace, which, by the time it reached the still-room, had grown to the
wildest of marvels. After that, no one seems to know exactly what
happened, but possibly, between fear of her own part in the affair and
rage at the treachery of her lover, the wretched creature lost what few
senses she had and actually forced her way into the presence of the
duchess, where she groveled on the floor, confessing and accusing and
Lord knows what besides, and was carried out raving and foaming at the
mouth."
"And so she confessed that she and her lover had stolen, or at any rate
carried off the necklace," commented Prue thoughtfully.
"Then how do you account for its restoration by Robin Freemantle?"
Beachcombe inquired, with his stealthy eyes upon her.
"Do you persist, even now, in connecting him with this affair?" she
retorted, facing him defiantly. "For my part, I am now thoroughly
convinced that it was a very vulgar matter and that I have been made a
fool and a tool of by a pack of low wretches. Do not let any one who
does not wish to offend me, ever mention my part in it again."
"On the contrary—" Barbara was beginning, when Peggie, from the window,
uttered a cry of admiration.
"Is that your new chair at the door, Barbara?" she cried. "Sure, ’tis
the finest in town!"
"Ah! I had for the moment forgotten—’twas but to display it I came here
this afternoon—to show that and to scold Prue for a faithless friend."
They all followed her to the window, and in the street below stood a
most superb sedan-chair, all carving and gilding, lined and curtained
with crimson, and borne by four strapping footmen in liveries to match.
"’Tis truly magnificent," cried Lord Beachcombe. "All the world admires
the taste of Lady Barbara Sweeting, but this time she has given us
something to marvel at."