"Do you persist, even now, in connecting him with this affair?" she retorted, facing him defiantly. "For my part, I am now thoroughly convinced that it was a very vulgar matter and that I have been made a fool and a tool of by a pack of low wretches. Do not let any one who does not wish to offend me, ever mention my part in it again."
"On the contrary—" Barbara was beginning, when Peggie, from the window, uttered a cry of admiration.
"Is that your new chair at the door, Barbara?" she cried. "Sure, 'tis the finest in town!"
"Ah! I had for the moment forgotten—'twas but to display it I came here this afternoon—to show that and to scold Prue for a faithless friend."
They all followed her to the window, and in the street below stood a most superb sedan-chair, all carving and gilding, lined and curtained with crimson, and borne by four strapping footmen in liveries to match.
"'Tis truly magnificent," cried Lord Beachcombe. "All the world admires the taste of Lady Barbara Sweeting, but this time she has given us something to marvel at."
While he was speaking, Peggie plucked at Prue's sleeve and murmured in her ear, "In the library," with a glance and gesture that needed no interpretation. With an immense effort of self-control, Prue stopped long enough to compliment her friend on her new and gorgeous equipage, and then slipped away, with her heart throbbing in her throat, and ran down-stairs, to find Robin awaiting her, rather inefficiently disguised in a gold-laced velvet coat and a voluminous periwig, in which his marked resemblance to Lord Beachcombe struck Prue with absolute consternation.
"Robin, Robin!" she cried, when the door was closed, "how could you dream of coming here, of all places?"
"I have dreamed of nothing else," he replied. His eyes were glowing and his whole countenance transformed by a sublime transport of adoration. Few men are capable of this ecstasy and few women privileged to behold it; none, it may be conjectured, can resist its enchantment. Prue, trembling with a strange joy, yielded to the arms of her lover-husband, and there forgot everything else for a few blissful moments.
"Dearest, you must not stay here," she murmured, when he released her lips, "your worst enemy is in this house." And in a few rapid words she told him of Lord Beachcombe's search after the papers, his prediction of Robin's visit and his suggestion of using her as a bait to the trap he proposed setting for him.