Robin burst out laughing. "Thanks, sweetheart!" he cried. "I trust my bride-elect has as kind a disposition as her messenger. Yet what does it matter to me?
"'Be she meeker, kinder than
Turtle-dove or pelican;
If she be not so to me,
What care I how kind she be?'"
His rich voice filled the squalid cell with burst of rollicking melody. "If she be a very Xantippe, I shall not suffer from her temper," he went on. "And, by the way, I do not yet know the name of the lady who has honored me by the offer of her hand—in widowhood."
"That I can not tell you, until I know your intentions," said Margaret. "First, will you marry her?"
"Will I marry her? Surely, she is not accustomed to sue in vain for men's hearts and hands! They must fall under her feet—as I do—when she but glances at them. Aye, I will marry her, though death himself ties the nuptial knot."
"That is settled, then—" Peggie was beginning philosophically.
"Settled, perhaps, as far as I am concerned; but what about your lady? Will her caprice last out until you return, think you, or will she be likely to stay in the same mind until to-morrow? 'Tis nothing to her, mayhap, to set a poor prisoner's brain afire, and bid him welcome death because it brings him five minutes of her company. I may dream myself her husband for a few hours, and forget everything else in the delicious hope of seeing her again; but what of her? By the time you go back to her, she may have changed her mind, or found some less objectionable way of paying her debts!"
"'Tis like enough," she replied coolly. "You would not be the first she has served in that fashion. You must take your chance of that."
"I'll take my chance," the prisoner acquiesced.
"Very well. Now, will you swear not to reveal the marriage to any one?—unless it be your father-confessor, if you have one."