CHAPTER V
LADIES AND GALLANTS
Breathless, half laughing and half crying, very merry, yet wholly frightened, those same two hooded and masked figures had paused almost immediately beneath the platform of Mirrab's tent.
They had been running very fast, and, exhausted, were now clinging to one another, cowering in the deepest shadow of the rough wooden construction.
"Oh! Margaret sweet," whispered a feminine voice from behind the silken mask, "I vow I should have died with fright!"
"Think you we have escaped them?" murmured the other feebly.
She who had first spoken, taller than her friend and obviously the leader of this mad escapade, tiptoed cautiously forward and peered out into the open space.
"Sh—sh—sh!" she whispered, as she dragged her unwilling companion after her, "do you see them? . . . right over there . . . they are running fast . . . Oh! ho! ho! ho!" she laughed suddenly with childish glee as she clapped her hands together; "but, Margaret dear! . . . did we not fool them merrily? . . . Oh! I could shriek for joy! Aye, run, run, run, my fine gallants!" she added, blowing an imaginary kiss to her distant pursuers, "an you go that way you'll ne'er o'ertake us, e'en though you raced the wind . . . ha! ha! ha! . . ."
Her laugh sounded a little forced and hysterical, for she had had a terrible fright, and her companion was still clinging miserably, helplessly to her side.
"Nay, Ursula, how can you be so merry?" admonished Margaret in a voice almost choked with tears; "think if the Duchess of Lincoln were to hear of this adventure—or Her Majesty herself—oh! . . ."