"The coach?" she said. "It is for me."
"It is for a bride."
"I am the bride."
"And the bridegroom?"
Her eyes sparkled. "Come!" she cried. "How is that your affair? We poor women have impertinences enough to suffer on these occasions; but it is new to me that the questions of chance visitors are part of them! Room's more than company, sometimes," she added, tossing her head, her accent not quite so genteel as it had been, when she was less moved. "And I'll be glad to see your back."
"I beg your pardon a thousand times, ma'am," Coke replied unmoved. "But I see no impertinence in my question--unless, indeed, you are ashamed of your bridegroom."
"That I'm not!" she cried. "That I'm not! And"--snapping her fingers in his face--"that for you. You are impertinent! Ashamed? No, sir, I am not!"
"And God forbid I should be ashamed of my bride!" cried a husky voice behind Sir Hervey; who turned as if he had been pinched. "No, I'll be silent no longer," Tom continued, his face the colour of a beet, albeit his eyes overflowed with honest devotion. "I've played coward too long!" he went on, stretching out his arms as if he were throwing off a weight. "Let go, man"--this to Grocott, as the latter stealthily plucked his sleeve. "Sir Hervey, I didn't tell you before, but it wasn't because I was ashamed of my bride. Not I!" poor Tom cried bravely. "It was because I--I thought you might do something to thwart me. This lady has done me the honour of entrusting her happiness to me, and before one o'clock we shall be married. Now you know."
"Indeed!" Sir Hervey said. And great as was his amazement, he managed to cloak it after a fashion. In the first burst of Tom's confession he had glanced from him to the lady, and had surprised a black--a very black look. That same look he caught on Grocott's face; and in a wonderfully short space of time he had drawn his conclusions. "Indeed!" he repeated. "And whom have I--perhaps we might step into this room, we shall be more of a family party, eh?--whom have I to felicitate on the possession of Sir Thomas Maitland's heart?"
He bowed so low before madam that she was almost deceived; but not quite. She did not answer.