“An I’m to be a man, I’ll be one!” cried she, “and if Lady Diana ogles, lud! I’ll give as good as she sends. Little him as I love’ll know, ’tis of his sometime Peggy he’ll be jealous!” So it was with a prodigious fine flutter of her napkin and a mightily impudent twirl of her eye-glass (purchased not two hours since), that Her Ladyship made her bows and kissed the finger-tips of Lady Brookwood’s handsome daughter. “I am your most grateful, Sir Robin!” cried this one, “and more pleased than I can express to welcome you. I only regret that Lord Brookwood is at Brookwood Hall, and not here to thank you for rescuing his daughter.” And so forth and on, with presentations to a dozen of fine ladies, dowagers and damsels, and a precious lot of fine gentlemen; and it seemed to Peggy, in her simplicity, as if the whole of Mayfair were a-bowing and scraping and making her out a hero,—which indeed was not far off the fact. [Illustration: Two watched her as she came in...] Two watched her as she came in on Beau Brummell’s arm. These were Sir Percy and Kennaston; one green with anxiety for Grigson’s return from his errand, jumping at every sound; having left word both at Lark Lane, his coffee-house, as well as at home where he had gone, that Grigson should report to him at once he arrived; the other green with envy of Peggy and any other who neared his divinity, yet afraid and too diffident to approach her closer than with the devouring gaze of his eyes. “That damned puppy again!” cries Percy, under his breath, as he surveys Peg in her satins. “By Gad, Sir, every lady in the room’s turning spite eyes on t’other, your incomparable Diana included, for fear he won’t stop and pay her a compliment.” “Ah,” sighs the young poet. “Percy, an you loved like me ’twould be bliss to even gaze upon your fair. Think you I dare make bold now to cross and make my bow?” “Why not?” returns the other gloomily. “Forgive my humor, Kennaston. Truth is, Sir, I’m mad, mad for Peg, and my ears are cracking and my brain splitting until that rascal, Grigson, gets back with answer to my letter. He’s been gone long enough to have made the journey four times over!” “Oh, Percy,” returns Peg’s twin. “I love you as a brother, an could I but physic Your Lady into complaisance, I’d give my life for it. What owe I not to you?” adds the young man with deep feeling. “You’ve fed me, and zooks! Sir, to-night you’ve clothed me, for since the scurvy knaves that frightened Lady Di stole my suit of grays and my sword and hat, what had I left? Where would I be now, were’t not for you?” “Tush, Ken, lad, I love you for yourself,—and ten thousand times more for her sake. Ken, I love her so that as I told her, if Sir Robin were a better man I’d cry off, an she said she loved him.” “What said she?”