“Ah,” sighs the young poet. “Percy, an you loved like me ’twould be bliss to even gaze upon your fair. Think you I dare make bold now to cross and make my bow?”
“Why not?” returns the other gloomily. “Forgive my humor, Kennaston. Truth is, Sir, I’m mad, mad for Peg, and my ears are cracking and my brain splitting until that rascal, Grigson, gets back with answer to my letter. He’s been gone long enough to have made the journey four times over!”
“Oh, Percy,” returns Peg’s twin. “I love you as a brother, an could I but physic Your Lady into complaisance, I’d give my life for it. What owe I not to you?” adds the young man with deep feeling. “You’ve fed me, and zooks! Sir, to-night you’ve clothed me, for since the scurvy knaves that frightened Lady Di stole my suit of grays and my sword and hat, what had I left? Where would I be now, were’t not for you?”
“Tush, Ken, lad, I love you for yourself,—and ten thousand times more for her sake. Ken, I love her so that as I told her, if Sir Robin were a better man I’d cry off, an she said she loved him.”
“What said she?”
“Not that she loved him, but that she might,” he continues with sadness, as his eyes follow Peg on her almost royal progress about the drawing-rooms. “’Tis a proper fellow, enough, and I’d always heard he was a fright and a coward.”
Kennaston presently took heart of grace and crossed to pay his duty to Lady Diana, who, ’twas plain to be seen by every other than this bashful swain, was by no means the indifferent to him she would feign play off. Her color came and went as Kennaston, blushing to match his lady, ventured to spout his ode to her; and, leaving the pair to gallop on this pleasant path, Sir Percy at a distance unconsciously followed Lady Peggy, at least with his gaze.
Peggy meantime, denying right and left the story of her prowess, with quips and jests and ogles of the fair, still kept her eye on Percy. Not yet had she seen him approach Lady Diana; yet hold! even now, catching her own gaze fixed upon him, he turned and was presently bending over the little beauty’s fingers.
A pang shot through Peg’s heart, and the tears were like to force their way; she made an excuse and left the long drawing-room, taking refuge in a small apartment where the tables were ready for cards. She sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands. The candles were not yet lighted and she was totally unobserved. Dashing the salt drops from her lashes with her hand,—
“What am I!” she cried in her bitterness, “that I can not abide to even see him a-bending over her hand! Ain’t you no spirit, Peg? No pride? He’s not thinking of you, my dear; didn’t he say plain, if Sir Robin was the better man he’d give up to him! What kind of a suitor’s that, Peg? Lud! I’d not give up him to any one, whether they were my betters or no!”