“Tempers, my compliments to Sir Robin McTart, and beg of him to join us, for, at the least, a few moments. I know he’s averse to early rising, but pray inform him to skip across in his dressing-gown and slippers, and night-cap, we’ve no ladies here about to ogle him!” The which message being conveyed to My Lady Peggy a-sitting by the pulled-out chest of drawers, mournfully contemplating her long shorn tresses with barred door, arouses in her such a fever of sorrow as well-nigh chokes her utterance. “Say to Mr. Brummell I’m asleep, Tempers, and crave to know his pleasure, the answer to which I’ll send as faithfully as Morpheus will permit, by you for Mercury! Off with you!” and Her Ladyship softly stroked her locks, and for the thousandth time went planning her escape. Peels of laughter, rattling of rapiers, click of heels, and now— “Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat!” on the door. “McTart! McTart! Up with you from betwixt coverlets and into your Persian quilt!” “Out with ye, Sir Robin, or by Gad! Sir, we’ll in, the fifteen of us! and rout you up from Morpheus’s arms.” “Come, Sir Robin, dally no longer with sweet sleep; up, Sir, and bethink you of Beauty spelled with a P-E-G-G-Y!” shouts Sir Wyatt, chorused by the rest. At first clap of voices Peggy stuck her hair back into the drawer, jumped up, and stood, hand upon the dressing-table, her expression like nothing else so much as that of a fawn caught in a thicket. “’Sdeath! Gentlemen, I pray of you, a few moments grace!” cries she, trembling from the knees down, for ’tis quite of the temper of the manners of the day that in a second more the whole company should batter down the mahogany and burst in. “Three-and-thirty, an you like, Sir Robin!” says Escombe, who is soberer than the rest. “Give us the whereabouts of Lady Peggy Burgoyne,” shouts Mr. Chalmers, “and we’ll trouble you no more ’til doomsday!” “Lady Peggy Burgoyne!” “Lady Peggy Burgoyne!” “Where’s Lady Peggy Burgoyne?” “Where’s Lady Peggy Burgoyne?” “Where is the fair one for whom you and Sir Percy de Bohun have fought with blades and tongues, twice now, since this day last week?” “Lady Peggy Burgoyne!” cried they in hot concert, joined in most lustily by the Beau from his bed across the corridor, and accompanied by the pounding of fifteen rapier points on the parquet, and thirty fists on the woodwork, as well as the demoniacal screams of the Beau’s little negro and the parrot on his wrist. “Tell us where she is!” came high staccato last from Sir Wyatt’s exhausted lips. “My Lords and Gentlemen!” answers Her Ladyship, standing close to the door enveloped from top to toe in a sheet over her night-rail. “Would to God I could!” There was a ring of heartfelt truth in the reply, and its utterance was succeeded by a second’s surprised pause. The young bucks regarded each other with shrugs, pursed mouths, and interrogation points bristling in their eyes. Mr. Chalmers, recovered of his surprise sooner than the others, says: