Phœbe's face wore a smile of pleased recognition, and she stretched forth her right hand as the cavalier approached.
"You come in good time, Sir Guy!" she said.
"In very sooth, most fair, most mellific damsel, your unworthy servitor was erring enchanted in the paradise of your divine idea when that the horrific alarum did wend its fear-begetting course through the labyrinthine corridors of his auricular sensories."
Phœbe laughed, half in amusement half in soft content. Then she turned to Rebecca, who stood with wide-open eyes and mouth contemplating this strange apparition.
"Be not confounded, sweetheart," she said. "Have I not told thee I have ta'en on another's self. Come—thou art none the less dear, nor I less thine own."
She stepped forward and put her hand gently on her sister's.
Rebecca looked with troubled eyes into Phœbe's face and said, timidly:
"Won't ye go to a doctor's with me, Phœbe?"
There was a rude clatter of hoofs as the elder of the new-comers trotted past the two women and, with his whip drove back the advancing crowd, which had begun to close in upon them again.
"You were best mount and away with the ladies, Sir Guy," he said. "Yon scurvy loons are in poor humor for dalliance."