After the storm there came that calm which is the inevitable successor, save that, in this case, while the noise subsided, the wonder grew. Every one of Mr. Brummell’s company and all of the rest of the world beside, was rehearsing his and her own surmise as to the identity of the young gentleman who had, for above a month, been the town toast, and who had now disappeared as suddenly as he came. Some believed him to be Tom Kidde himself; some, a Lord out of France; some, a Prince of the blood; some, the Devil; some, an astrologer; there was no lack of inventions as to Her Ladyship’s identity by the time the ten minutes of Sir Percy’s setting had come to an end. He cast an eye about the place looking for Sir Robin, and his veins were fairly on fire to know the color of his rival’s blood and wring from his, he hoped, dying lips, a confession of where Lady Peggy was. Presently, not spying his opponent, he begged Escombe and Chalmers to have the goodness to seek him out; settle the spot; ask him to choose his seconds; call a surgeon (of whom there were always a score in attendance at Vauxhall, ready for just such affairs), while he himself swung down toward the river to look for Kennaston and give him one last word for Peggy, should Sir Robin run him through. Peg’s twin lay on the turf sleeping. Such are the effects of being at once a poet and a lover, not yet twenty, and quite fagged with wide-awake nights and days and a fair lady’s cruel caprices. Sir Percy looked at him, smiled, and whispered as he knelt: “Dear lad, thou that art My Lady’s twin, when next thou seest her, sure I know she’ll lay her dear lips on thy brow, and there she’ll find, this.” Percy kissed the boy as he spoke. “’Tis doubtless more than she’d care to discover, but, if death comes, ’twill ease the blow and charm the pain while I remember this message that I send her now.” He turned away and left Peg’s brother lying there to waken at his leisure. When he reached the Walk again, another clamor greeted him identical with its predecessor. “Sir Robin McTart! Sir Robin McTart! Sir Robin! Sir Robin! Come forth of your seclusion. The time is up. Sir Robin, I say-y-y-y!” This Sir Robin McTart had vanished as mysteriously as the other one, and though the entire company made the welkin ring with the same cry over again: “Sir Robin McTart! Sir Robin! Sir Robin! Sir Robin McTart!” no Sir Robin appeared or could be found, and they were fain be content, reinforced by the ladies now well out of their swoons and terrors, to finish up the night with punch and loo in the boxes, all brains much of a muddle with the strange adventures and miraculous disappearances incident upon Beau Brummell’s never-to-be-forgotten masquerade party at Vauxhall. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] XVI