“Madam,” says Mr. Walker with great state, on hearing this praise,—“Mrs. Bishop says true—My offer need certainly not go abegging when half the women in London would jump at it. I allow for modesty and coquetry, and a rake like myself loves modesty in his women but you’ve said and done enough now to prove you the possessor of both. Prepare for the ceremony. The parson is belowstairs.”
He went and opened the door, calling aloud,—
“Mr. Evans, be so obliging as walk up. The lady and me are ready.”
But Diana had slipt to her knees by the sofa, hiding her face against it, beaten down at last, hopeless of any aid or pity but what might come from her own helpless courage. What stung her most cruelly was the letter to the Duchess. Heavens! What might not such wretches have writ in her name,—and the Duke would hear it and know her utterly vile. In that moment she tasted more than the bitterness of death, and owned herself utterly over-reached.
A shuffling step came up the stair and a man entered whom, had she seen, she must shrink from with loathing—a dull heavy-eyed scoundrel in a parson’s greasy gown threadbare at the edges,—one of the unfrocked crew that hung about the Fleet, ripe for any mischief, with the smell of drink hot on him. He took notice of the young creature on her knees, and showed his gapped teeth in a laugh. ’Twas not the first and would not be the last in the way of his business.
“Drag her up, Sir,”—he says to Walker. “She must stand. Let the lady hold her up on t’other side. ’Tis the signature after that really matters. Come on, young Madam,—Time and tide wait for no woman. I’m due elsewhere in thirty minutes.”
But Diana did not raise her head.
“Come along, my dear. You promised to make me happy. Be as good as your word!” says Walker, wheedling and laying hold of her arm. Then first the man Evans observed her wrists.
“You must untie them, Mr. Walker. Sure a lady can’t take the ring with her hands like that, and besides I mustn’t have it said I married any woman dragged bound to the altar— Free her hands, Sir,—she can’t escape anyhow.”
Walker seeing him in earnest took out his knife and cut the bond as her hands lay stretched out on the sofa. But still she lay as if dead, with her head upon them.