Part 14 (2/2)

”O Lord, madam!” said I, ”'twas very necessary that Degge should think me so. A house-breaker they would have only hanged, but a Jacobite they would have hanged and quartered afterward.”

”Ah, Frank, do not speak of such fearful matters, but forgive me instantly!” she wailed.

And I was about to do so in what I considered the most agreeable and appropriate manner when the madcap broke away from me, and sprang upon a footstool and waved her fan defiantly.

”Down with the Elector!” she cried, in her high, sweet voice. ”Long live King James!”

And then, with a most lovely wildness of mien, she began to sing:

”Ken ye the rhyme to porringer?

Ken ye the rhyme to porringer?

King James the Seventh had ae daughter--”

until I interrupted her. For, ”Extraordinary creature!” I pleaded, ”you will rouse the house.”

”I don't care! I intend to be a Jacobite if you are one!”

”Eh, well,” said I, ”Frank Audaine is not the man to coerce his wife in a political matter. Nevertheless, I know of a certain Jacobite who is not unlikely to have a bad time of it if by any chance Lord Humphrey recognized him to-night. Nay, Miss, you may live to be a widow yet.”

”But he didn't recognize you. And if he did”--she snapped her fingers,--”why, we'll fight him again, you and I. Won't we, my dear? For he stole our secret, you know. And he stole me, too. Very pretty behavior, wasn't it?” And here Miss, Allonby stamped the tiniest, the most infinitesimal of red-heeled slippers.

”The rogue he didna keep me lang, To budge we made him fain again--

”that's you, Frank, and your great, long sword. And now:

”We'll hang him high, upon a tree, And King Frank shall hae his ain again!”

Afterward my adored Dorothy jumped from the footstool, and came toward me, lifting up the crimson trifle that she calls her mouth, ”So take your own, my king,” she breathed, with a wonderful gesture of surrender.

And a gentleman could do no less.

V

ACTORS ALL

_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 3, 1750_

”_I am thinking if some little, filching, inquisitive poet should get my story, and represent it to the stage, what those ladies who are never precise but at a play would say of me now,--that I were a confident, coming piece, I warrant, and they would d.a.m.n the poor poet for libelling the s.e.x._”

DRAMATIS PERSONae

DUKE OF ORMSKIRK.

COLONEL DENSTROUDE, } SIR GRESLEY CARNE, } Gentlemen of the town.

MR. BABINGTON-HERLE, }

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