But, with a tightening rein, he checks himself, as well as his horse, as he answers.
“Mr. Chalmers, the Lady you name is one whom I honor most deeply, and it seems to me if she has seen fit to go into seclusion, or to marry secretly, that, while I may wish to God it had been in open church! I must continue to respect her preferences, until she elects to change them;” with which, breaking the little pause of silence which follows, Sir Percy gallops ahead, joining Mr. Brummell, who has put himself quickly out of the commotion he had foreseen as likely to arrive.
Meantime, it may be correctly imagined that Her Ladyship, with all her sex’s exquisite ingenuity at plaguing itself whenever it possibly can, had seized upon those words of Sir Percy’s most easily twisted into a means of self-torture.
“I wish to God it had been in open church!” instantly stuck itself in her thoughts beside “Consents;” the two forming just that species of flagellation which ladies so situated in mind are wont to inflict upon themselves.
The supposed Sir Robin, from this on, until the arrival of the party at Ivy Dene, became taciturn, even morose, and not a syllable could be got from him in answer to the wildest gibes.
Her eyes intent upon Sir Percy, who now kept to the fore with his host, My Lady Peggy, on the keen lookout for the possible assassin, and to the tune of “consents,” and its running-mate, “I would to God it had been in open church!” put in a very dolorous twenty miles; but, on dismounting at Mr. Brummell’s doorstep, she endeavored to infuse a little joyousness into her looks and speech.
Indeed, ’twas difficult; yet no more so to-day than any other since she had been coerced by circumstances into an acceptance of the Beau’s hospitality. Every mouthful of bread and meat Peggy ate well-nigh choked her, as she remembered ’twas meant for Sir Robin McTart. She felt herself a trickster, a villain of the deepest dye, and yet saw no way out of her usurped character with honor and repute; no way of keeping in it save by the deeper dyeing of her soul in sin, which she promised herself, and heaven, to expiate as soon as Percy should be safe from Sir Robin’s men.
The afternoon was spent as had been planned; the country cook’s dinner was voted a perfect success: Mr. Chalmers, slightly raised by wine, even going so far as to send her down, with his compliments, his favorite ruby heart-pin: when, on the spot, not a gentleman present but whipped out a jewel from ruffle, finger, pocket or fob, and Peggy herself tying ’em up in a pocket-napkin laced with Brussels and perfumed like the civet-cat, sent them down to the astonished lass in the kitchen.
A game of cards was in order after the repast: a tilt at politics: a wager on the question of tea in the Colonies; Lady Peggy and Sir Percy keeping, by the grace of each, well apart in all these encounters; and at twelve o’clock, just as the moon was rising behind a bank of splendid star-fringed clouds, Mr. Brummell and his guests set forth on their homeward road.
The beauty of the night was such as soothes and casts its own mantle of peace over even those unquiet spirits which may be abroad.