"Rat the parson!" it cried; "he should have been here an hour ago. Here's the door left open for him, endangering the whole venture, and whey-face han't plucked up heart to come! Do some of you rogues fetch him without delay; and do all of you meet me to-morrow at the Mitre, to be paid in full for this business, before reporting to his Grace."
"Here," thinks I, "is beyond doubt a romance." And as the men tumbled down-stairs and into the street, I resolved to see the adventure through, by the light of those candles which were now burning in the next room.
I waited for perhaps ten minutes, during which period I was aware of divers movements near at hand; and, judging that in any case there was but one man's anger to be apprehended, I crept toward the intervening door and found it luckily ajar.
So I peered through the crack into the adjoining room, and there, as I had anticipated, discovered Lord Humphrey Degge, whom I had last seen at Lady Culcheth's wrangling over a game of écarté with the fairest antagonist the universe could afford.
Just now my Lord was in a state of high emotion, and the cause of it was evident when I perceived his ruffians had borne into the house a swooning lady, whom merciful unconsciousness had rendered oblivious to her present surroundings, and whose wrists his Lordship was vigorously slapping in the intervals between his frequent applications to her nostrils of a flask, which, as I more lately learned, contained sal volatile.
Here was an unlucky turn, since I had no desire to announce my whereabouts, my business in the house being of a sort that necessitated secrecy; whereas, upon the other hand, I could not but misdoubt my Lord's intention toward the unknown fair was of discreditable kinship, and such as a gentleman might not countenance with self-esteem.
Accordingly I devoted the moments during which the lady was recovering from her swoon, to serious reflection concerning the course that I should preferably adopt. But now, Miss came to, and, as is the custom of all females similarly situated, rubbed her eyes and said, "Where am I?"
And when she rose from the divan I saw that 'twas my adored Dorothy.
"In the presence of your infatuated slave," says my Lord. "Ah, divine Miss
Allonby—!"
But being now aware of her deplorable circumstances, she began to weep, and, in spite of the amorous rhetoric with which his Lordship was prompt to comfort her, rebuked him for unmanly conduct, with sublimity and fire, and depicted the horrors of her present predicament in terms that were both just and elegant.