"Oh, Kitty Bellairs, Kitty Bellairs!" gasped Mr. Stafford, shook his finger at her, felt blindly for a support, and rolled up against Sir Jasper.
The baronet straightway fell into an opportunely adjacent chair and there remained—his legs extended with compass stiffness, his eyes starting with truly bovine bewilderment—staring at the rosy visage, the plump little figure, that now emerged from the inglenook.
"Oh dear, oh dear!" faintly murmured Stafford. And with a fresh breath he was off again. "Aha ha ha! for an ox, my Jasper, thou hast started on a lovely wild goose chase—as friend O'Hara might say." While:
"Mercy on us!" rippled the lady. "I protest, 'tis the drollest scene. Oh, Sir Jasper, Sir Jasper, see what jealousy may bring a man to!"
"Musha, it's neither head nor tail I can make of the game," said O'Hara, "but sure it's like an angel choir to hear you laugh again, me darling."
The guileless gentleman approached his mistress as he spoke, and prepared to encircle her waist. But with a sudden sharpness she whisked herself from his touch.
"Pray, sir," she said, "remember how we stand to each other! If I laugh 'tis with relief to know myself safe."
"Safe?" he echoed with sudden awful misgiving.
"Aye," said she, and spoke more tartly for the remorseful smiting of her own heart, as she marked the change in his face. "You would seem to forget, sir, that you have carried me off by violence—treacherously seized me with your hired ruffians." Her voice grew ever shriller, as certain rumours, which her expectant ears had already caught approaching, now grew quite unmistakable without, and hasty steps resounded in the passage. "Oh, Mr. O'Hara, you have cruelly used me!" cried the lady. "Oh, Sir Jasper, oh, Mr. Stafford, from what a fate has your most unexpected presence here to-night thus opportunely saved me!"
At this point she looked up and gave a scream of most intense astonishment: for there, in the doorway, stood my Lord Verney; and, over his shoulder, peered the white face of Captain Spicer, all puckered up with curiosity.