IX
In the which Lady Peg overhears a horrible
plot to murder; and wherein
Mr. Incognito encountereth
Sir Robin.
She herself falls into such an immediate flood of tears as shakes her well, and then up she rises from her depths, and with all the courage of her race and blood, she vows that, come another sunset she will quit Peter’s Court as if for a walk, and never return; that in small clothes, since it must be, she will journey back to Kennaston Castle, and risk all the discomfiture and disgrace her doing so may bring upon her.
In point of fact, My Lady Peggy was at that state of mind when it seemed to her no degradation or humiliation, no sorrow that could be visited upon her, would be too much punishment, or enough, for the sins without number she had committed since the luckless day she took the coach for town.
When she emerged from her room for dinner, ’twas to learn that Mr. Brummell had been summoned hastily to St. James’s on so important an affair as to initiate His Royal Highness into the mysteries of the new tie of Sir Robin’s own invention! and that he trusted in this audience to obtain permission to fetch Sir Robin to the Palace and present him within a few days to several august personages, etc., etc., etc.