And he disappeared, chuckling at his own wit.
"Now," said Sir Geoffrey, turning to Prudence with a smile, "all that remains is the pleasant ceremony of congratulating the bridegroom and saluting the bride, and then we had better be going."
Prue was standing a little apart, with down-cast eyes and a certain trouble in her pensive face, that almost foretokened tears. She drew back a step at Sir Geoffrey's words, and put up her hand, palm-outward.
"Let us have no more mockery," she said coldly. "We have made ourselves quite contemptible enough, without further buffoonery. So far from congratulating the bridegroom, we should do better to apologize to him." She stamped her foot slightly but positively, as he seemed disposed to persist. "As to the bride, sir, for once she is in no humor for folly. Be kind enough to take my cousin out and find a chair for her; then you can return and see me to my carriage."
"And leave you here?" he exclaimed.
"Where else would you leave me?" she retorted, in a jeering tone. "Are you afraid to leave me with my husband?"
Sir Geoffrey would still have lingered to remonstrate, but Peggie, whose ready sympathy divined her cousin's motive, placed her hand within his arm, and drawing her veil closely over her face, announced herself ready for departure.
"The gentleman is not my husband," she remarked demurely. "It would scarcely be proper to leave me alone with him, and you can not escort us both at once."
But when they were alone, the words of extenuation Prue intended to speak, seemed hard of utterance. There was a little lump in her throat, and she could think of no commonplace form of excuse that seemed to fit the occasion. Robin gazed at her as though he wished to fill his whole soul with her image. Yet, although they were scarcely twenty inches apart, he made no attempt to touch her.
"Morituri te salutant," he said, with a curious mingling of irony and tenderness in his voice. "Accept the blessing of a dying man."