M. de Rondiniacque had little reason to hope for anything better than a second rebuff if he pursued the Prince to plead Royston's cause in the garden. He therefore sat him down in the hall where they had left him, to ponder miserably enough the mischief he had done. But scarce, being wont at times to speak to himself aloud, had he cried: "Mort de ma vie! but if poor Royston suffer for this, I will forswear all and turn monk" (wholly forgetting, as he was at times not a little used, the grave cause of his expatriation), when there ran lightly out from the shelter formed by the hanging that was before the door that leads to the kitchens, who but little Prue?
Now, it was not far from this door that Mr. Bentinck had stood while he read the letters brought by the courier, and it was at this point that Prudence now paused, and stooping, raised from the floor a sheet of thin paper, twice folded, which it soon appeared she had from her cover observed that gentleman to let fall. Holding this behind her back, she addressed M. de Rondiniacque.
"'T is a mighty fine business, Master Foreigner," she said. "See how you have embroiled everything with this love of kissing! It is like enough you have by this means cost an honest man his life."
"'T is all true that you say," replied he; "yet I cannot tell how you should know it, if you have not wilfully listened since ever your mistress sent you from this place."
"I came between that door and its curtain," she replied, "in the same moment that Sir Michael did ask the Prince the reason of his churlishness. So it was not long before I heard good Mr. Royston tell how he did use the sword for Sir Michael's daughter. And I were a ninnyhammer indeed, if I could not from that tell the rest of the tale. Therefore, I say again, that 't is all your fault, ill man that you are!"
"It is mine, indeed," said De Rondiniacque sadly.
Then did Prudence pull a very long and solemn face.
"Do you repent of your sins?" she asked.
"Most heartily I do," he answered.
"And would you atone?" she continued.