Part 7

A shudder quivered through her. "I don’t know what I shall do on Monday," she said, in a low, strained voice, and ran out of the room and up-stairs without another thought of Sir Geoffrey.

He waited for a few minutes, in hopes of her return, and then went down and let himself out into the moonlit street.

*CHAPTER XI*

*THE MORROW’S WAKENING*

Before Sunday evening, Peggie really lost patience with Prue. She was so saucy and coquettish, so bubbling over with merry stories and foolish jests, that even in church she could not keep still, but fluttered her fan and whispered behind it to Peggie, until that lively damsel was quite ashamed of her levity. Not one word could she be induced to say about Robin. Astonished at her indifference, Peggie tried in a variety of ways to entrap her into some expression of feeling about him, but she became impatient under questions, and received any suggestions of sympathy with cold flippancy or even more provoking silence.

All the afternoon, a stream of visitors poured through the little house in Mayfair. Superb equipages and sumptuous sedan-chairs blocked the thoroughfare, while their occupants, in gorgeous array, offered their congratulations to the Lady Prudence, and sipped weak tea and chocolate out of her grandmother’s egg-shell "chaney" cups. Lady Drumloch did not venture into such a crowd, but, decked in her priceless cashmeres and laces, received a favored few in her dressing-room, and listened with a flush of pride on her pale face to the praises of Prue’s beauty and the prognostications of a future even more brilliant and eventful than her past.

"You must persuade her to marry well and settle down, dear cousin," Lady Limerick advised. "Twenty-two is quite old enough, even for a widow, to give up frivolous flirtations and choose a husband. The men are all wild about her, I know; but if she jilts a few more of them, the rest will get frightened and leave her in the lurch, and she will have to be satisfied with a crooked stick, like many another spoilt beauty."

"She must please herself," Lady Drumloch replied. "The harder she finds it to choose before marriage, the less likely she will be to repent afterward."

For all that the old lady took occasion to read her granddaughter a sharp lecture upon the necessity of mending her ways before too late. To which, Prue listened reverentially, and promised speedy amendment. Five minutes afterward, in the privacy of their own room, she was making Peggie die of laughter at her caricature of herself as a reformed character, with all her fascinating caprices exchanged for the cares of the nursery and still-room, obedience to a tyrannical spouse replacing her sway over a score of suitors, while she wielded Mrs. Grundy’s birch instead of defying it. Not one solemn or repentant thought clouded the laughter of her blue eyes, and when her cousin kissed her good night and bade her sleep well, she cried out:

"Why, I’m two-thirds asleep already," and turned upon her pillow with a sigh of voluptuous drowsiness.

But in the night, Peggie, who always slept with the communicating door open between the two rooms, was awakened by a sound so strange and unaccustomed, that her heart stood still for a moment, with awe. From the little white bed, wherein Prue usually slept as calmly as a child, came sounds of grievous weeping, sighs and sobs and broken words of self-reproach, and prayers for pardon for herself and pity for one in extremity.

Peggie started from her bed and crept stealthily to the door, where she was not long discovering the cause of this unexpected outbreak.

"Oh! if I could only once ask him to forgive me," Prue sobbed. "Oh! Robin, Robin, I did not want you to love me; I did not mean to be cruel. My God! he will die without knowing—oh! me, oh! me—"

"Poor little Prue, how unjust I have been," thought Peggy remorsefully. "I was past all patience with her heartless indifference, and here she is breaking her heart over a frolic marriage with a highwayman!"

She crept in quietly, and lying down beside Prue, put her arms round the little quivering form and drew the tear-damp face upon her kindly bosom.

"What is the matter, Prue? Don’t cry so dreadfully," she said, soothing and petting her. "There, there, be comforted, darling. You are not to blame. We persuaded you, and after all Robin is none the worse for knowing he leaves some one behind to weep for him."

"But he doesn’t know it. How can he?" sobbed Prue. "He thinks me a heartless, mercenary coquette—just as Sir Geoffrey does, and you, too. You know you thought so, Peggie—"

Margaret was conscience-stricken, but could not deny it. "I know you are a dear little thing, Prue, and though I thought yesterday you did not care, I know better now. I’m so sorry for you, dear. Your poor head is so hot and your hands are so cold. You’ll be sick to-morrow, and after all, it isn’t your fault."

Prudence threw her arms round her and buried her face on her shoulder in a fresh burst of tears.

"Oh! Peggie, I am a very wicked woman, I fear," she sobbed. "Can anything be worse than to make a solemn vow before God to love and honor a man I do not mean ever to see again—to swear to keep him in sickness and poverty, when all I wish for is that he may die a violent death to save me from my just debts? Oh! no, no. I do not wish it, Peggie. The man loves me! If ever I saw love in a man’s eyes, it was when Robin held me in his arms and prayed me give him one kiss and then forget him! Alas, Peggie, I can never forget him! He will haunt me with those eyes that can look death in the face without blenching, and yet will be closed for ever in a few hours. Oh! Peggie, Peggie, he must not die for me."

"He does not die for you, dear Prue. He dies for his crimes. Faith, I’m sorry for it, though he isn’t my husband. But think what a plight you would be in if he were to live!" Peggie remonstrated.

Prue looked at her like a child suddenly roused from sleep and finding its way back gradually from dreamland.

"’Tis true," she gasped. "What would become of me?"

"You are his wife," Peggie went on, "and as long as he lives you can not marry any one else. As to your debts—if he were not to die, he would have to pay them or go to prison."

"Oh, Peggie, stop! Every word you say makes me hate myself worse and worse. I must have been mad to marry a robber—a man who forced a kiss from me at the point of a pistol, as it were, and yet now he is my husband I can not, dare not, wish him dead."

"If you wished it ever so much, dear, you could neither help nor hinder it," Peggie began consolingly.

"I’m not so sure of that," cried Prue, raising herself on her elbow and speaking excitedly. "Do you know last night when I was in the duchess’ box I had more than half a mind to fall on my knees before her and own everything and implore her to save Robin’s life—"

"Great Heaven!" gasped Peggie. "What on earth do you suppose she would have done to you?"

"I do not know, and I am not sure that I care much," sighed Prue, sinking back on her pillow. "But I’m a wretched coward at heart, and a lump came up in my throat and stifled the words, and all I could say when she saw the tears running down my face was some foolishness about the play being so affecting, when every one round me was laughing and I didn’t even know what the actors were talking about."

"What did the duchess say?" asked Peggie, eager for all the information she could obtain while her cousin was in the mood to tell it.

"That I was a little fool. And Lord Ripworth said, ’Not at all, that I wanted them to see how lovely I looked in tears.’ And they all joked me until I would rather have been hanged myself than hinted at anything tragic in my life."

Peggie assured her that it was much better as it was and that nothing would have come of such a self-betrayal but scandal and disgrace that would have broken their grandmother’s heart and banished them for ever from society. Then she kissed and petted her until she fell asleep, much as a grieved and frightened child might do, with long-drawn sighs and broken sobs gradually softening into the tranquil respiration of dreamless repose.

But there was the morrow’s waking to come, and it came to Prue with a sudden sweep of consciousness and recollection that scorched her brain and stopped the beating of her heart. The clock on the mantel chimed the half-hour, and starting up in a panic she saw that the hands pointed to half-past seven.

And Robin Freemantle was to die at eight o’clock. Even now he was on the way to Tyburn, shackled to other malefactors in the dreadful cart which he would never leave alive. Even now the mob was jeering him and his wretched companions and gloating over the prospect of the "last dying speeches and confessions" which were expected to play so important a part in the morning’s entertainment. Four of them were to be hanged that morning—two coiners, a house-breaker and—_Prue’s Husband_! The hideousness of the thought struck her again with an agony of shame that tingled in every nerve and for the moment dried the tears upon her burning face.

She heard Peggie moving in the next room and sprang out of bed, dashing cold water over her face and head in feverish haste to wash off the tears and cool down the turgid blood that throbbed in her temples and crimsoned her cheeks.

Just then the clock struck eight. A neighboring church-clock took up the chime, and then another at a little distance. It was Robin’s death-knell. Prue groped blindly a few steps and then, with a low, wailing cry, fell on the floor in a deathly swoon.

Peggie ran in and by main force lifted her up and laid her on the bed. The application of such simple remedies as cold water and hartshorn soon brought back consciousness, and with it floods of tears and such heart-broken lamentations that Peggie began to ask herself whether there could be any magic in the marriage service to make a widow mourn so bitterly for a husband she had only seen on two occasions, and masked on one of those! She wisely refrained from investigating the source of Prue’s emotion however, rightly judging that the more completely she gave way to it the quicker it would wear itself out.

In fact, after an hour or so the violence of her grief subsided, leaving her pale and languid and much disposed to pity herself as in some mysterious way very cruelly used by fate and altogether a most interesting victim.

In this frame of mind she insisted upon rummaging out a black dress and arranging her curly locks in as subdued a fashion as their luxuriance and natural wilfulness would submit to. Then she permitted Peggie to lead her down-stairs.

Behind the dining-room there was a dingy, sunless little library looking out upon a few feet of neglected back-yard and the blank wall of a neighboring mansion. To this penitential apartment Prue retired, delegating to Peggie the task of receiving her callers and making what excuses she pleased for her absence.

"Say I am ill; say I am dead; say whatever you think will get rid of them quickest, Peggie, but don’t let them imagine that I am unhappy, for that is the deadliest breach of good-manners and would make me an object of ridicule."

"Well, promise me you will not fret any more," besought Peggie, caressing her. "Your sweet eyes are all puffed up and you won’t be fit for the masquerade ball if you cry any more."

Prue promised to control herself, and by way of keeping her word threw herself on the floor before the door closed upon her cousin, and flinging her arms out upon the seat of a chair, laid her face upon them and gave way to quieter and more subdued, but not less bitter weeping.

She had not long been thus when the door opened and some one looked in. Thinking that she was being sought for and sure that where she lay she was safely hidden, she kept very still.

"Will you wait in here, sir, until I inquire if her ladyship can see you?" said James, the butler. "What name shall I say?"

"It would be useless to give my name," replied a deep voice; "or stay, you can say I bring tidings from Bleak-moor."

As the door closed, Prue rose to her feet with distended eyes and bristling hair, and faced Robin Freemantle.

He wore a long riding-coat of wine-colored cloth and carried a broad beaver caught up on one side with a plain silver buckle. A small quantity of fine linen ruffle protruded from his vest and the sleeves of his coat, and his left hand rested in a broad black ribbon sling. With his neat leather gaiters and spurred heels, and the plain sword in its black scabbard peeping from beneath the full skirt of his coat, he looked the traveling country-gentleman to the life.

For a minute or more the husband and wife stood gazing upon each other in silence. Gradually the look of terror faded from Prue’s face and was replaced by an expression in which fear and anger contended with relief.

"It is really you?" she gasped—"alive—and free?" Then the recollection of her futile tears and her hours of anguish rushed over her and she stamped her little foot in unmistakable irritation.

"You are angry with me—because I am alive?" he said, recoiling as though she had struck him.

"I have no right to be angry," she said coldly. "On the contrary, I congratulate you."

"_You_ congratulate _me_!" he repeated slowly. "But how about yourself? I am afraid my—resurrection—has put you in an awkward position."

She made no reply.

"Am I to blame for that—?" he began, but she turned upon him swiftly.

"You mean that it is my own fault that you are my husband?" she interrupted, her blue eyes flashing like steel. "If you choose to blame me for that, I have not a word to say in my own defense."

"If I dared, I would bless you for it," he said, in a low voice, "although you, perhaps, were waiting impatiently for news of my death, when I interrupted you?"

Remembering how she had been employed, Prue had no answer ready. She was silent a minute, and then abruptly blurted out, "How did you escape, and why did you come here? Good Heaven, if they should follow you and find you here! Oh, how could you betray me? Sure, I am the most unfortunate woman in the world—!"

"Listen to me; there is nothing for you to be alarmed about," he cried, hurriedly coming to her and seizing her hand. "I am free—reprieved—pardoned. No one will follow me here; no one—" He stopped suddenly, and looked fixedly at her. "What has happened?" he asked, in a tone of deep concern. "You are so pale—your eyes are red and swollen—you have been weeping?"

"I thought you were dead!" she said half-resentfully.

"And you wept because you thought I was dead?" he said incredulously—"You were sorry for _me_?" He stood gazing at her, lost in an amazement so profound that it seemed like a reproach.

She drew away her hand.

"I should be sorry for any poor soul condemned to die," she said, with an effort at indifference.

"When last I saw her," he said doubtfully, as if reasoning out a strange problem against which his reason contended, "she was fresh and smiling, and prinked out like a princess for her marriage with a highwayman. To-day she is pale and sad," his eye ran over her somber figure, "and all in black—for my sake—"

"You run on too fast!" Prue interrupted petulantly. "Can I not wear a black dress without putting on mourning for your sake? Methinks I’ll have to wear it for my own! Never, surely, was a woman so caught in her own trap!" She cast her eyes round, as though for visible means of escape. Suddenly a thought of horror glanced into her mind.

"Did you come here to claim me?" she gasped, sinking into a chair, pallid with fear.

"You need not fear me, I have no such design upon you," he said, regarding her with pitying tenderness. He was sorely wounded, though more for her sake than his own. "Can you not understand that I would rather perish by the most cruel tortures than give you one moment’s pain? Oh! rather than see that look of fear and hatred upon your face, I would I were now hanging upon the gallows! At least, you would pity me there, and if not, I should be none the worse off for your scorn. I am free, it is true, but an exile, and unless I leave these shores within eight days, an outlaw. In a week, then, should I be still alive, I shall be dead in law and you will be free from me for ever."

She listened attentively while he was speaking, and her face lost its tense look of terror. Once or twice she glanced furtively at him, noting the power and grace of his tall form, his easy, self-confident bearing and the manly frankness of his strong, swarthy face—more attractive than mere beauty to a woman so essentially feminine as Prudence. She was not afraid of him now, but she was extremely angry with fate, and at the moment he represented fate in its most inexorable form, so she wanted to be very angry with him. Yet she could not reproach him, for the harder she struck at him, the more she would wound her own pride.

"It is all so terrible," she said, sighing wearily. Then the door was flung open, and Peggie darted in with the _News_ sheet in her hand.

"Prue, Prue," she cried, flinging her arms round her cousin without observing that she was not alone. "He is not dead—he has been pardoned and is out of prison. Oh! my poor, dear Prue, to think you were all night breaking your heart for nothing—"

"Hush, hush, Peggie!" Prue was scarlet to the roots of her hair, and with both her hands over Peggie’s mouth, tried to stifle her voice.

"Mercy!" shrieked Peggie, suddenly discovering Robin. "How did you get here? What did you come for?"

"For no evil purpose, my good Mistress Peggie," he replied good-humoredly. "I came as any other visitor and requested a few words in private with Lady Prudence Brooke. By good fortune, I found her here alone, and will now proceed to disclose the object of my visit, which is simply to ask her to take charge of this small packet for me, until I send a messenger for it."

The packet was a compact one, about the size of an ordinary letter, and scarcely thicker, carefully stitched in a piece of white silk, and secured by a seal without any device.

Robin held it out to Prue, but she made no movement to take it.

"Oh! don’t be afraid that I would ask you to do anything dangerous," he went on earnestly. "If it concerned myself, I would not dare to trouble you, but this is a sacred trust, which I hold far above my life, and if I were rearrested, which is quite possible, I might not be able to rid myself of it in time to prevent a great disaster. It was for this reason that I took the unwarrantable liberty of calling upon the Viscountess Brooke. This packet concerns the life and fortune of many friends of hers, but no one would think of looking for it in the keeping of the Duchess of Marlborough’s favorite."

"Friends of mine?" she exclaimed incredulously. "Then who are you?"

"A poor soldier of fortune," he replied, bowing low as though introducing himself, "who has for a moment crossed your path, and in a few days will return to his natural obscurity and trouble you no more. All he asks is forgiveness for having so signally failed in keeping his part of the marriage contract."

"It is not that," she interrupted, thoroughly abashed, though not less angry than before. "_I_ should, perhaps, be the one to ask pardon for forcing a marriage upon you which must be very irksome now; for, sure, you must be even more embarrassed to find yourself saddled with a wife than I with a husband. Yet, believe me, I am not so bad as I seem. Peggie knows I did not wish you harm, but oh! I wish I had never seen you. Why did you attack us on Bleakmoor, and why, oh! why did you let yourself be caught and put in prison—by Sir Geoffrey, of all men! Even the devil could not have put such an idea in my head, about a highwayman I had never seen or heard of—"

Poor Robin turned so pale while Prue poured out these lamentations, that Peggie took compassion on him. "Out upon you, Cousin, for a railing shrew! If you must needs blame somebody, let it be me, for if I had not persuaded you to run away from Yorkshire, Captain Freemantle would not have kissed—I mean waylaid you—and if I had refused to carry your message to Newgate, he would have been spared a scolding wife, and God he knows, his state would have been the more gracious—if I had not meddled in things I had better have left alone."

"Well, Peggie, I forgive you; and you too, Sir Highwayman. The only person I can not pardon is Prudence Brooke, who never looks the length of her nose before she jumps over a precipice," said Prue. "Give me your packet," she held out her hand, without raising her eyes, "and tell me how I can serve you; but do not trust me too far; you can see for yourself what an empty-headed little fool I am."

"If you knew how you hurt me by blaming yourself, you would refrain," said Robin, in a low voice. "Believe me, death would be welcome, if it would make you as kind to me again as you were when I was condemned to die. But a higher law than man’s law forbids us to take our own life or even throw it away recklessly; yet do not despair, the outlaw walks blindfold through a worldful of executioners."

"You wrong me in speaking as though—as though I were one of them," she replied, with a touch of disdain. "What do you wish me to do with your packet?"

"To keep it safely until my messenger calls for it, and to be alone when you give it to him. He will carry no credentials," Robin added, "and will merely inquire if you have anything for The Captain. You can surrender your charge to him without fear. Accept my profoundest thanks for this favor, and my humblest apologies for having intruded so long. Farewell, ladies."

Once more he bowed ceremoniously and was gone.

*CHAPTER XII*

*THE PRICE OF A BIRTHRIGHT*

Robin set out at a rapid pace in the direction of the city, but as he was passing through a crowded street, a crippled beggar with a patch over one eye stopped him, and with a piteous whine, implored his charity.

Tossing him a coin, Robin went on his way, but the beggar, quite agile for so dilapidated a creature, kept close behind him, pouring out a stream of petitions and lamentations.

"What’s sixpence to a noble lord like your honor? Make it a shilling, brave Captain, to help me out of the country. There’s a warrant out for me, and divil take me if I know what’s the charge, but its something political—hanging and quartering at the very least. Thank your honor kindly, and may your enemies always get the worst of it. Ah! but Lunnon’s a bad town, and Linc’n’s Inn’s the very place to ambush a man and take him after the lawyers have got everything out of him. Divil take me if ever I’d give a thing to a lawyer that I might want myself; they’d take your life for six-and-eightpence, and make a bargain with Ould Scratch for your soul—-"

"That will do, my good fellow," said Robin, flashing a quick glance at him. "You need not follow me any farther, you are only wasting what is doubtless valuable time."

The beggar mumbled an excuse, and turned to beg from the nearest passer-by. And Robin pursued his way in a very thoughtful mood.

"Another warrant out," he murmured. "I ought to have thought of that when they appointed this morning to finish the business instead of settling it all yesterday. Steve was right. These hounds never meant to give me a chance."

By this time he was in the Strand, and turning up a paved court behind St. Martin’s Church, knocked at a door, on which the name of Matthew Double, Attorney-at-Law, appeared on a brass plate.