Now Lady Biddy, in common with other ladies of fashion and moving in certain high circles of society, had heard a deal of the mysterious and all unseen Lady Peggy. She well knew the supposition that was rife as to Lady Peggy’s being secretly the wife of Sir Robin McTart. She knew from her bosom friend, Lady Diana Weston, who had the same most direct from her suitor, Lord Kennaston, Lady Peggy’s own twin-brother, that his sister was from home, unknown her whereabouts to father or mother, kith or kin, maid or man, save that she was “up in London”; that Sir Percy de Bohun was mad for love and loss of her; that her brother, had he not been in like case by means of Lady Diana, would long since have made public search, as he was indeed making such privately, for the discovery of the eloping Fair. She likewise was aware that Sir Robin frequented the gay world, was not adverse to ogling a lady, as she herself could testify; stopped at Mr. Brummell’s house; and, albeit ’twas said had fought a duel with Sir Percy because of Lady Peggy, still did not absent himself from any rout, ridotto, or ball, on her always absent account. So, equipped with such a fund of knowledge and any amount of surmise, Her Ladyship replied coyly beneath her mask: “Why do you think so, Sir Robin, and pray if I were Lady Peggy, what, now, would you be afther saying to me?” “Zounds! ’tis she!” exclaims the Baronet, carried away by the fact that Lady Biddy’s hand beneath her cloak has more than half-way met his own moist and trembling fingers. “Loveliest of women! Oh, ’twas indeed by your express directions, was’t not, that Mr. Incognito on Monday, watching for me in High Holborn nigh the shop of Mounseer Jabot, bid me come here to-night to meet you?” Lady Biddy, although much averse to the clammy touch of her cavalier, gives his fingers an assuring pressure. “Why, oh, why!” pursues Sir Robin, now as much elated by this tacit confession of her passion for him, as he was but lately overwhelmed by the mention of such strange words as “hanging, highwayman, Sir Percy de Bohun,” etc., etc., “why have you seen fit to keep me in such a length of suspense? Why have I not been allowed, before this, to behold you, and renew the days of our sojourn in Kent? Speak, my angel, speak!” “La, Sir!” murmurs Lady Biddy, minx-like, ever anxious to get at the heart of this now much deepened enigma, “la, Sir, do you not know but too well the whys and wherefores of my secrecy?” Her Ladyship from Cork actually squeezes the little Baronet’s crooked little hand.