“But she swore me she’d be back in a few moments, Mr. Incognito, and ’sdeath! Sir!” perceiving Lady Biddy emerging from the box and advancing toward the lion alone, “there she is!”
Off and away Sir Robin McTart to join his Fair, while Lady Peggy, screened by the increasing shadows, for the dripping lamps are one by one, by this, dying down in their globes, beholds one—she devines not which—of Beau Brummell’s lady guests, courtesying and greeting the Baronet with her finger-tips.
Now My Lady’s heart’s a-thumping monstrous hard; she beholds, as well as Sir Robin and his supposed Peggy, two others—alas! she knows too well who they are, a-peeping out from the corner of the box-entrance whence Lady Biddy came just now, and watching her encounter with Sir Robin.
These are Lady Diana and Sir Percy.
Together? Aye and a-goin’ to be “together” for all their lives, she sadly thinks, both of them, quite forgetting, save perchance for a moment’s beguilement, her very existence. But it behooves her, if not for her own sake, of which she has come to the pass of recking but little, then for her father’s and mother’s, now to bid farewell forever to disguises, falsehoods, cheatings, man’s estate, and even the melancholy chance of seeing the countenance of Sir Percy. She will off presently, and reach home as best she may.
A few minutes, more or less, can make no odds, and ’tis but too true that Her Ladyship stood there in ambush of the branches in the vain hope that Percy might lift his mask, if but for an instant, and thus allow her parting gaze to rest upon his features.
It is quite true that mortals, although in never such haste to reach a desired crisis, still ofttimes halt at the threshhold of its attainment; so Her Ladyship, with now nothing to hinder her escape, still stood leaning against an oak, listless, but for the eager eyes fixed on the pair in the box entrance. These presently crossed into the throng and, joining others of the maskers, were lost to her view; but the Baronet and Lady Biddy had not been idle of their tongues this while.
Much simpering, angling for news, tittering, and a neat show of wit in the manner of plying a gentleman with questions on a matter about which he was quite ignorant, on the lady’s side; ardor, impatience, as much daring as his little spirit permitted, on the gentleman’s. Finally said he:
“Mr. Incognito says you start for Kennaston this very night, my dearest life, is’t so?”
“Tell me who is Mr. Incognito?” says she, “and I’ll answer you straight.”