VIII
Wherein Lady Peggy picks a very pretty quarrel
with her presumed rival: and is
later bid to Beau Brummell’s
levee in her night rail.
At this precise moment Lady Peggy, scarce able to contain herself longer and, reckless of every possible consequence, being about to cast herself upon her quondam lover’s protection, and to be rid forever of being a man, is stopped short of her purpose by the words that now fall slowly from the young man’s lips.
“To deceive! to lie! to scheme! and plot, and bring shame and trouble upon her father and mother! Gad’s life!” Sir Percy brings his clenched hand down with a thump upon the card-table. “I had never believed that of Peggy! I’d have felled him that had hinted she could even plan a lie, or run off to a secret marriage with the best man that lives.”
At which speech My Lady’s color burned as never before since she was born, and her choler rose at the double charge, both the one that was true as to her deceit, and the one that was not as to her secret nuptials.
Palpitating with rage and wounded sensibility, with remorse and wretchedness; brought to bay with a situation she could not endure, Peg now utterly forgot her breeches or her shame at these, and, stepping boldly forth into the small circle of light shed in at the doorway, from the candles in the corridor, she saluted Sir Percy and spoke: