At this moment, an 'Ah ha! here's the Demoiselle!—Here she is, faith!' suddenly presented before them Riley, mounted upon a fragment of the pile, to take a view around him.
Starting, and in dread of some new horrour, Juliet looked at him aghast; while, clapping his hands, and turbently approaching her, he exclaimed, 'Yes! here she is, in propria persona! I was afraid that she had slipped through our fingers again! Monsieur le cher Epoux will have a pretty tight job of it to get her into conjugal trammels! he will, faith!'
To the other, and yet more horrible sensations of Juliet, this speech added a depth of shame nearly overwhelming, from the implied obloquy hanging upon the character of a wife eloping from her husband.
Presently, however, all within was changed; re-invigourated, new strung! and joy, irresistibly, beamed from her eyes, and hope glowed upon her cheeks, as Riley related that, before he had left the inn upon the road, he had himself seen the new Mounseer, with poor Surly, who had been seized as an accomplice, packed off together for the sea-coast, whence they were both, with all speed, to be embarked for their own dear country.
The Baronet waved his hand, in act of congratulation to Juliet, but forbore speaking; and Riley went on.
'They made confounded wry faces, and grimaces, both of them. I never saw a grimmer couple! They amused me mightily; they did, faith! But I can't compliment you, Demoiselle, upon your choice of a loving partner. He has as hang-dog a physiognomy as a Bow Street prowler might wish to light upon on a summer's day. A most fiend-like aspect, I confess. I don't well make out what you took to him for, Demoiselle? His Cupid's arrows must have been handsomely tipt with gold, to blind you to all that brass of his brow and his port.'
Sir Jaspar, distressed for Juliet, and much annoyed by this interruption, however happy in the intelligence to which it was the vehicle, enquired what chance had brought Mr Riley to Stonehenge?
The chance, he answered, that generally ruled his actions, namely, his own will and pleasure. He had found out, in his prowls about Salisbury, that Sir Jaspar was to be followed to Stonehenge by a dainty repast; and, deeming his news well worth a bumper to the loving sea-voyagers, he had borrowed a horse of one of Master Baronet's grooms, to take his share in the feast.
The Baronet, at this hint, instantly, and with scrupulous politeness, did the honours of his stores; though he was ready to gnash his teeth with ire, at so mundane an appropriation of his fairy purposes.
'What a rare hand you are, Demoiselle,' cried Riley, 'at hocus pocus work! Who the deuce, with that Hebe face of yours, could have thought of your being a married woman! Why, when I saw you at the old Bang'em's concert, at Brighthelmstone, I should have taken you for a boarding-school Miss. But you metamorphose yourself about so, one does not know which way to look for you. Ovid was a mere fool to you. His nymphs, turned into trees, and rivers, and flowers, and beasts, and fishes, make such a staring chaos of lies, that one reads them without a ray of reference to truth; like the tales of the Genii, or of old Mother Goose. He makes such a comical hodge podge of animal, vegetable, and mineral choppings and changes, that we should shout over them, as our brats do at a puppet-shew, when old Nick teaches punchinello the devil's dance down to hell; or pummels his wife to a mummy; if it were not for the sly rogue's tickling one's ears so cajolingly with the jingle of metre. But Demoiselle, here, scorns all that namby pamby work.'