“That do I not! Mr. Incognito never would tell me aught, but thus and so; and bade me, from your adorable lips, keep myself in seclusion and safety,—nor ever,” continues he, his tone sinking to a mere breath, “endanger my precious self,” now stooping to imprint a chaste kiss on Her Ladyship’s hand, “in the meeting even once of Sir Percy de Bohun, for he had sworn to kill me on beholding me. Dearest life,” proceeds Sir Robin, withdrawing Lady Biddy a bit into the shade of the great trees, “I have obeyed your commands. I have never set eyes upon the scoundrel, but have kept myself close housed at my inn in Pimlico, awaiting your dear pleasure.” “Have ye?” murmurs Lady Biddy, now more bewildered than she ever was before in her life, and seeing no clear way, either to read the puzzle or, truth to tell, to elude the gentleman. Yet the wits of a lady, especially if she happen to have been born in Ireland, may usually be trusted to extricate her from almost any dilemma; therefore, when Sir Robin has done swearing of his impatient probation passed at the Puffled Hen, says she, tweaking her hoop and making a courtesy: “Lud! Robin,” (the hussy!) “but you are a killing creature! Nay, nay!” drawing out a few steps, he after her, from the shade of the trees and more in the flare of the twinkling globe lamps. “Nay, tarry here but a moment; there are the same reasons for your not accompanying me now that have prevailed upon me to keep our matters secret hitherto. I pray you, stir not from the neighborhood of this wooden lion—see?—until I return, which I will do presently.” “Faith!” cries the Baronet, “I’ll not budge, my divine Peggy! until you are once more at my side!” and with a horrid leer through his peepholes, he essays to take Lady Biddy’s hand once more, but she’s off, balking him. Quick as thought, she scampered across to the edge of the orchestra, where she discovered a group of masks and among ’em one, whom, by the rose pinned to her bloom-colored bodice, she knew to be Lady Diana, and she made certain that two of the three bloods near her, canes dangling at their button-holes, must be Sir Percy and Lord Kennaston. “Hist!” exclaims Lady Biddy, panting partly from speed, partly from the fright a lady alone might experience in running the gauntlet of so many macaronis and fops, not to speak of thieves and pickpockets, as perforce was the case in progressing about Vauxhall. “What is’t Biddy, for I know you by your silver heels,” answers Lady Di. “Mischief, I’ll dare be sworn, or it’s not you! Speak your mind; there’s none here but what can keep a secret, and the whole of us have been a-watching you with some one, fie! at the entrance to the Dark Alleys.” “Is Sir Percy here? Is this he?” whispers Biddy. Sir Percy bows, for he is there; while the other two gentlemen, inferring from her tone that she seeks a private ear, instantly withdraw to one of the boxes for a glass of Burgundy to refresh their spirits.