"You had better warn your son," suggested the Irishman.
The Quakeress quaked with terror.
"Reuben! He will overwhelm me with reproaches!"
"Never mind what he says. He is the betrothed of his cousin; he is energetic and courageous; if any one is capable of snatching the girl from impending doom, it is he. There is not a moment to be lost."
"But where shall we find him?"
"As to that," replied Fisher, "nothing is easier. All day long he has been at the head of the papal enemies. I must be greatly mistaken if he is not at this moment engaged in setting fire to the Sardinian chapel."
It was thereupon decided to place Mrs. Marsham in safety in Fisher's house, which was near Oxford Road, while the two men went in search of Reuben.
The hairdresser had friends everywhere. At the door he received fresh tidings which confirmed his suppositions. Capt. Hackman, Lord Mowbray's inseparable companion, had been seen in Oxford Road with a pistol under each arm. A carriage without armorial bearings, with neutral colored livery, had been stationed at a short distance. A masked gentleman with a brown and blue domino upon his arm had come out of the Pantheon. He had signalled the carriage, which had approached, and the man and woman had entered it. Thereupon Hackman sprang upon the box, saying to the coachman, "To Chelsea!" Then the horses set off at full speed towards the left, narrowly escaping running over people. There was still another version which a page had to tell. It was the same masked man and the domino in the same colors; only the affair had taken place at one of the little side-doors of the Pantheon. Instead of the coach a sedan-chair had carried off the fugitive towards the right, in the direction of the city. In affairs of the kind there are always points of difference among the witnesses. Who was to be believed? Evidently those who had recognized Hackman and heard the address given to the coachman. It was towards the "Folly" at Chelsea that Mowbray had undoubtedly taken his victim. Fisher was an alert and intelligent man. Some minutes later, divested of his turban, his Persian robe, and his beard, he joined Reuben in Duke Street. The vandals had achieved their work, and the crowd of by-standers, lit up by the flames, gloated over the spectacle. The blazing pile, formed of the ornaments of the chapel, was beginning to flag for lack of combustibles.
A horde of children of fourteen or fifteen years of age, having taken the places of the men, danced about the charred remains, uttering cries and causing a flame to spring up here and there by administering a kick to the embers. A transient glow illumined the street, revealing the faces of terrified women at the windows, and in an obscure corner a group of the rioters with their hats drawn down over their eyes. Among them stood Reuben, coldly implacable, watching lest any one should approach the fire to save or steal anything.
It was at this moment that Fisher approached him and whispered a few words in his ear. Reuben started in surprise and rage.