Lord Beachcombe looked at her again with growing mistrust. "Did he have the impudence to call himself De Cliffe, when he addressed you at the ball, Viscountess?" he demanded. "La! no; and if he had—people can say anything behind a mask, without fear of being believed," she retorted, laughing. "I recollect now that ’twas Barbara Sweeting, when she told us of the loss of the queen’s necklace. She told us how you had obtained his pardon when condemned to be hanged, and afterward set the soldiers upon him—" Beachcombe bent his sullen glance upon the carpet, tracing out its faded pattern with his Malacca cane. "Every family has its painful secrets, Lady Prudence," he began, "and this packet contains one of the De Cliffe family secrets—a painful one, but not important—oh—not at all important. Had the soldiers found it, it would have been an easy matter to recover it—a few guineas at most—but if it is still in his possession—" "What like was it?" Prue inquired listlessly, for she was growing weary of a subject that had so little of personal interest for her. "The packet? Oh! a small thing, about the size and appearance of a letter—a _billet-doux_"—he forced a laugh—"sealed and addressed to Mistress—Mistress—the name has escaped me for the moment, but ’twas in care of the Hostess of the _Fox and Grapes_." A sudden glow of color swept across Prue’s face. In her joy at finding that the source of many a jealous pang was not Robin’s after all, it is to be feared that she quite overlooked the gravity of Lord Beachcombe’s accusation. What did it matter to her, whose letter it was—if it were not Robin’s—written to another woman? She had an impulse to return it, and her hand involuntarily rose to the laces about her neck, where she had kept it concealed except when she thrust it under her pillow, where it lay all night pervading her dreams. She checked herself quickly, though not quite unobserved. Beachcombe, of course, did not suspect anything so preposterous as that Prue could be interested in the highwayman, beyond the fact that he had made her the heroine of a successful escapade, but her change of countenance, slight as it was, and her gesture, though instantly diverted to a readjustment of the rose at her breast, did not escape his keen eye. "You recognize the superscription?" he suggested insinuatingly. "You saw the packet in his hands, perhaps? If—so—" "If so," she interrupted quickly, "you have little chance of recovering it, since ’tis said he was drowned last night." "If I could only believe that true!" he exclaimed fiercely. "But no! he escaped; there can be no doubt of that; in fact I have reason to know—"