reaches toward treasure far more precious—'
'Enough!' he cried, impatiently, 'Begone! and do you render thanks—that my present business is so urgent as to prevent my furnishing the rope which will one day adorn your neck.'
'That's as may be,' quoth I; 'and, indeed, I doubt if I could abide drowning, for 'tis a damp, unwholesome, and very permanent sort of death. But my fixed purpose, to cut short all debate, is to escort Miss Allonby homeward.'
'Come,' sneers my Lord,—'come, Mr. Moloch, I have borne with your insolence for a quarter of an hour —'
'Twenty minutes,' said I, after consulting my watch.
'—but I mean to put up with it no longer; and in consequence I take the boorish liberty of suggesting that this is none of your affair.'
'Good sir,' I conceded, 'your Lordship speaks with considerable justice, and we must leave the final decision to Miss here.'
I bowed toward her. In her face there was a curious bewilderment that made me fear lest, for all my mask, for all my unnatural intonations, and for all the room's half-light, my worshipped mistress had come near to recognizing this caught thief.
'Miss Allonby,' said I, in a falsetto voice which trembled, 'since I am unknown to you, may I trust you will permit me to present myself? My name—though, indeed, I have a multitude of names—is for the occasion Frederick Thomasson. With my father's appellation and estates I cannot accommodate you, for the reason that a mystery attaches to his identity. As for my mother, let it suffice to say that she was a vivacious brunette of a large acquaintance, and generally known to the public as Black Moll O'Reilly. I began life as a pickpocket. Since then I have so far improved my natural gifts that the police are flattering enough to value my person at several hundred pounds. My rank in society, as you perceive, is not exalted; yet, if my luck by any chance should fail, I do not question that I shall, upon some subsequent Friday, move in loftier circles than any nobleman who happens at the time to be on Tyburn Hill.—So much for my poor self. And since by this late hour Lady Allonby is beyond doubt beginning to grow uneasy, let us have done with further exposition, and remember that 'tis high time you selected an escort to her residence. May I implore that you choose between the son of the Marquis of Venour and Black Molly's bastard?'
She looked us over,—first one, then the other. More lately she laughed; and if I had never seen her before, I could have found it in my heart to love her for the sweet insolence of her demeanor.
'After all,' said my adored Dorothy, 'I prefer the rogue who when he goes about his knaveries has at least the decency to wear a mask.'
'That, my Lord,' said I, 'is fairly conclusive; and so we will be journeying.'
'Over my dead body!' says he.
'Sure, and what's beneath the feet,' I protested, 'is equally beneath consideration.'
The witticism stung him like a wasp, and, with an oath, he drew, as I was heartily glad to observe, for I cannot help thinking that when it comes to the last pinch, and one gentleman is excessively annoyed by the existence of another, steel is your only arbiter, and charitable allowances for the dead make the one rational peroration. So we crossed blades; and, pursuing my usual tactics, I began upon a flow of words, which course, as I have learned by old experience, is apt to disconcert an adversary far more than any trick of the sword can do.
I pressed him sorely, and he continued to give way, but clearly for tactical purposes, and without permitting the bright flash of steel that protected him to swerve an instant from the proper line.
'Miss Allonby,' said I, growing impatient, 'have you never seen a venomous insect pinned to the wall? In that case, I pray you to attend more closely. For one has only to parry—thus! And to thrust—in this fashion! And behold, the thing is done!'
In fact, having been run through the chest, my Lord was for the moment affixed to the panelling at the extreme end of the apartment, where he writhed, much in the manner of a cockchafer which mischievous urchins have pinned to a card,—his mien and his gesticulations, however, being rather more suggestive of the torments of the damned, as they are so strikingly depicted by the Italian Dante. [Footnote: I allude, of course, to the famous Florentine, who excels no less in his detailed depictions of infernal anguish than in his eloquent portrayal of the graduated and equitable emoluments of an eternal glorification.—F.A.] He tumbled in a heap, though, when I sheathed my sword and bowed toward my charmer.
'Miss Allonby,' said I, 'thus quickly ends this evil quarter of an hour; and with, equal expedition, I think, should we be leaving this evil quarter of the town.'
She had watched the combat with staring and frightened eyes. Now she had drawn nearer, and she looked curiously at her over-presumptuous lover where he had fallen.
'Have you killed him?' she asked, in a hushed voice.
'O Lord, no!' I protested. 'The life of a peer's son is too valuable a matter; he will be little the worse for it in a week.'
'The dog!' cries she, overcome with pardonable indignation at the affront which the misguided nobleman had put upon her; and afterward, with a ferocity the more astounding in an individual whose demeanor was by ordinary of an aspect so amiable and so engaging, she said, 'Oh, the lewd thieving dog!'
'My adorable Miss Allonby,' said I, 'do not, I pray you, thus slander the canine species! Meanwhile, permit me to remind you that 'tis inexpedient to loiter in these parts, for the parson will presently be at hand; and if it be to inter rather than to marry Lord Humphrey—well, after all, the peerage is a populous estate! But, either way, time presses.'
'Come!' said she, and took my arm; and together we went down-stairs and into the street.
IV
On the way homeward she spoke never a word. Vanringham had made a hasty flitting when my Lord's people arrived, so that we saw nothing of him. But when we had come safely to Lady Allonby's villa, Dorothy began to laugh.
'Captain Audaine,' says she, in a wearied and scornful voice, 'I know that the hour is very late, yet there are certain matters to be settled between as which will, I think, scarcely admit of delay. I pray you, then, grant me ten minutes' conversation.'
She had known me all along, you see. Trust the dullest woman to play Oedipus when love sets the riddle. So there was nothing to do save clap my mask into my pocket and follow her, sheepishly enough, toward one of the salons, where at Dorothy's solicitation a gaping footman made a light for us.
She left me there to kick my heels through a solitude of some moments' extent. But in a while my dear mistress came into the room, with her arms full of trinkets and knick-knacks, which she flung upon a table.
'Here's your ring, Captain Audaine,' says she, and drew it from her finger.
'I did not wear it long, did I? And here's the miniature you gave me, too. I used to kiss it every night, you know. And here's a flower you dropped at Lady Pevensey's. I picked it up—oh, very secretly!—because you had worn it, you understand. And here's—'
But at this point she fairly broke down; and she cast her round white arms about the heap of trinkets, and strained them close to her, and bowed her imperious golden head above them in anguish.
'Oh, how I loved you—how I loved you!' she sobbed. 'And all the while you were only a common thief!'
'Dorothy—!' I pleaded.
'You shame me—you shame me past utterance!' she cried, in a storm of mingled tears and laughter. 'Here's this bold Captain Audaine, who comes to Tunbridge from nobody knows where, and wins a maid's love, and proves in the end a beggarly house-breaker! Mr. Garrick might make a mirthful comedy of this, might he not?' Then she rose to her feet very stiffly. 'Take your gifts, Mr. Thief,' says she, pointing,—'take them. And for God's sake let me not see you again!'
So I was forced to make a clean breast of it.
'Dorothy,' said I, 'ken ye the rhyme to porringer?' But she only stared at me through unshed tears.
Presently, though, I hummed over the old song:
