Titania started.
"Oh, a very good-looking one," she cried.
"What did I say? Remember what I said," said the marchioness, darkly. "No really good girl could act as she does. She will marry a groom!"
She went around saying so in revenge for Penelope's want of politeness. The journalists took Timothy Bunting's photograph, and Miss Weekes was proud till she heard the dreadful rumour. Timothy beat a man on a paper, and Bob was delighted. Titania took to her bed, and said the end of the world was at hand. Bradstock laughed till he cried, and cut the marchioness in the park. Her husband was very much pleased at this, and said it served her right. Chloe Cadwallader wrote her first letter since the scandal to Cadwallader in the Rockies, for she felt he would be the only man in the world who hadn't heard of it. Ethel lay wait for Captain Goby, and asked him to kill some one. There was not a soul in London who did not hear of it. And then Timothy quarrelled with Harriet Weekes. He went to Penelope, and with a crimson face and bated breath and much humbleness asked to be sent down to the country.
"You shall go," said Penelope, with great decision. "I can trust you, I know."
"My lady, you can trust me with untold gold and diamonds," replied Timothy Bunting, almost with tears.
"I shall send you to a house of mine you have never heard of," said Penelope. "And I expect you, Bunting, not to write to any one from there. I do not wish any one to know I live there."
"I'll not tell the Harchbishop of Canterbury 'imself, my lady, not if he begged me on his knees, with lighted candles in his 'and," said Bunting. "And, above all, my lady, I'll not tell it to Miss Weekes. Her and me 'ave quarrelled, and 'ave parted for hever. And I wouldn't trust her, my lady, not farther than you can sling a bull by the tail, my lady. I've trusted her to my rueing, so I have, and if she finds out hanything she'll sell it to the Times, which 'ave promised her a public 'ouse at a corner."
This revelation of the methods of Printing House Square shocked Penelope dreadfully.
"Oh, I always thought the Times was a respectable journal," she said.