“Now, ’twas hearts of course, damn ’em, and the queen of ’em that’s roused both your tempers, but for God’s sake, gentlemen,” taking now the hand of each which has slipped clear of Kennaston’s fingers, “bethink you, if the lady, whose name I can’t even guess, whom you both adore, stood here, what would her pleasure be, Robin, my lad, answer me, for of brawling there can be none here and fighting no more. Speak, Sir!” “Faith!” answered Lady Peggy, with splendid valor and a rise in her color and her heels, “to my certain knowledge the lady’d have her name put out of the matter wholly, and she’d sooner die, Sir, than have any fighting over her preferences, by either Sir Percy de Bohun or Sir Robin McTart.” The which being taken to be, by all present, a most prodigious and amazing gentlemanlike and politic speech, Sir Percy was feign accept, mock-smile and bow, while all the rest blew their lungs hollow applauding and praising his still hated and still suspected rival. Peace restored outwardly, whatever else raged in the breasts of the two opponents, the gallants sat to their tables, Kennaston managing to whisper to Sir Percy across the deal: “As I was telling you when I entered, Percy, Lady Di permits me to let you know she consents to my dedicating the ode to her, and Lillie, at the corner of Beanford Buildings in the Strand, hath engaged to publish it at once!” But this, Lady Peggy, at a distant table, engaged in picquet with His Grace of Escombe, hears not; there rings in her ears naught save the words Kennaston uttered when he came into the card-room—“Lady Diana hath given me leave to tell you she _consents_.” “Consents!” To what else but his suit? Which, egged on by his noble uncle, has been pushing any time these ten years, since boy and girl Sir Percy and Lady Di had played, ridden, romped, quarreled as brother and sister together. “Consents!” It echoes and resounds in Her Ladyship’s head over and over again the night through, and ’tis quite of a piece with her mood that she seeks out Lady Diana when tea and cakes are passing, and, with sly looks, congratulates Her Ladyship on the happiness she has this night conferred on a very gallant gentleman not so many miles away! And quite in Lady Diana’s line of reasoning, having heard from Kennaston that Sir Robin has come up to town highly commended to him by his sister, and that, although he had been sorely jealous and distraught at the said Sir Robin’s good fortune in the matter of the rescue of Her Ladyship, he still believed him to be head over heels in love with his twin, etc., etc., etc., and so, Her Ladyship argued, Kennaston had doubtless confided to the said Sir Robin such tokens of her favor as the said Lady Diana had that evening seen fit to manifest; never for a moment misdoubting that any other swain was in the supposed Robin’s mind any more than he was in her own! “_Consents!_”