Titania groaned in the corner of a vast settee. Bradstock and Brading whistled, or it seemed so. But the other poor wretches stared at Penelope, and saw no one, heard no one, but her. "And I wanted you to come to-night so that I could ask you all to go on in the path of rectitude and simplicity and courage, balloons and hard work and healthiness and thought for others, even if I was married," said Pen, with a gasp. "Will you, oh, will you?" "We will," said the crowd, Goby leading with a deep bass voice and tears in his eyes. "Oh, I’m so glad," said Penelope, "for I shall not have lived in vain even if I died to-night. And now—and now—I have to tell you something." "Great heavens," said Titania, in an awestricken and penetrating whisper, "what is she going to say now?" "I have kept my word," said Penelope, with her eyes on the floor. "I have kept my word!" "What—what word?" asked the collapsed duchess, and Pen tried to say what word she had kept. "Speak up," said Bob, "speak up, Pen!" And she did speak up. "For—for," gasped Penelope, "for, you see, I _have_ married one of you!" Titania uttered a scream and promptly fainted. The men looked at each other furiously and suspiciously, while Pen was on her knees beside the poor duchess. At that moment a message was brought in for Gordon, and an urgent note from the whip for Bramber. Brading stood in a corner and whistled. Bradstock shrugged his shoulders, and Bob buzzed all over the room like a wasp in a bottle. By dint of water and smelling-salts and the slapping of hands Titania was brought to, and when she had recovered consciousness to the extent of knowing what it was that had bowled her over, she uttered words on the spur of the moment which were almost as much of a bombshell as those Penelope had spoken. "I don’t believe she’s married at all," said Titania. *CHAPTER XII.* To talk about the grounds of certainty is to talk metaphysically, and metaphysics being the highest form of nonsense, becomes sense in that altitude, as it must be if Hegel is to be believed. But in the conduct of life the grounds of certainty are an estate beyond the rainbow. If Penelope believed any one thing with more fervour than another, it was that her truthfulness must be self-evident. The course of events after the evening on which Titania fainted and recovered so sharply showed her that nothing was certain, not even self-evident truths. For though she said she was married, few, if any, believed her. Titania, who believed in her intuitions, as all right-minded women must, because reason is only an attribute of man, declared that Penelope had lied, to put it plainly. She invented an hypothesis to account for it. "She found out she didn’t want to marry any of them, and her courage to say so failed her. This notion of hers gives her time, and of course, my dear, as you see from what I say, she’s not married in the least."