Her Ladyship inclines her head. She is well pleased to speak truth when she can.
“By Gad! Mr. Brummell, you’ve hit the mark,” says she.
“Sleep not o’ nights? fickle at your meat? wake sighing? dream of patches, smiles, and dainty fingers? mistrust yourself? easily affronted? believe the whole world’s pointing at you in raillery? take no pleasure in horse, man, gun or dog? loathe all the Fair, save one? love solitude?”
Her Ladyship’s feign to smile in the midst of the snuff, which she abhors, and has only taken because she had to. Sneezing, she nods as her companion continues:
“Hate company? are cursin’ me now for an addle-pated fool, and wishing I’d leave you to yourself, eh? Don’t answer. I know it, Robin, well; a thousand times, more or less, have I been where you stand to-day, and had just cause, I fancied, to damn the Prince himself, since that which I was then pleased to dub his foolish prattle served to distract my ruminations from whichever Lady ’twas at the moment claimed my fancy. I cursed him then, Sir, for clinging to my arm, but now I bless him, as you will me some future day—for, Robin, hark ye, there’s not one of the jades but deceives us, no, Sir! and I’m goin’ to hang on to you, Sir, for keepin’ of you out of the vapors. Zounds, Sir! I’ll not leave you to any such ill company as himself proves to a young man in your predicament. Come, Sir, come; we’ll up and into Will’s, and there, me stickin’ faster than a burr, we’ll home to Peter’s Court and with a merry lot of gentlemen make a pretty night of’t against to-morrow with its evening at Vauxhall.”
With which pleasant and most well-intentioned sally, Lady Peggy again finds herself constrained to put off that redemption of her true estate for which she so deeply yearns.
Mr. Brummell’s party went by water to Vauxhall, and ’twas indeed a heavenly night for such an expedition, with no large lady-moon a-staring, but the rather a thin slip of a silver damsel hanging in the vault, and millions of stars a-waiting on her, not any of these a-revealing too much or a-telling any tales if a gentleman’s hand chanced to come in contact with a lady’s amid the folds of brocade, or under the long cloth of the black, crimson or blue cloaks in which all these merry masqueraders were enveloped.
Sir Percy de Bohun was beside Lady Diana Weston; Peggy noted the same with jealous, despairing eyes; while at the left of Lord Brookwood’s daughter sat her own twin—only the second time she had seen him since the memorable night in Lark Lane; nor did she see him plainly now, for all the company had set forth in their masks, and only removed them between whiles to gain a breath of fresh air. ’Twas expected that the larger number of the party would meet them at the Gardens, and thereafter the sport and mystification would begin.
So it turned out; not only all the rest of Mr. Brummell’s friends in their cloaks and masks, with glimpse now and then of satins, taffetas, laces, ribands, jeweled stomachers, bodices ablaze, and so forth, but a vast assemblage of other folk also awaited the arrival of the Beau’s barge at the bottom of the Gardens.
Among these, two lurked in the shadow of the trees; they were Sir Robin and the Vicar. The former noted with deep joy that he had, by a happy chance, chosen a crimson color for his new suit, exactly corresponding to that of one of these gallants; that his cloak of sable hue was also quite the ton, and that he could thus, with ease, mingle with the party, and presently, no doubt, either discover Lady Peggy’s identity, or, more than likely, she herself would disclose the same to him, and at last reward his faithfulness and patience. No qualm visited the little gentleman’s conscience-pocket with regard to his supposed victim, although, it is true, he had given him a vicious thought as he had stood near the river’s bank waiting for Mr. Brummell’s barge to come in sight. So had Peggy, as she was being rowed past the old Dove Pier; into her mind and into Sir Percy’s had come the memory of the Sunday night, but he spoke of it no more than, certes, did she.