"And how about Captain Freemantle?" suggested Prue. "Would his obligation to me also be lifelong?" "Why—no doubt," he replied, with a sinister smile. "Well, Lord Beachcombe," said Prue, with a charming smile, "I will give your message to this Knight of the Road—_when_ I see him—and I doubt not he will wait upon your lordship to receive the benefits you are so anxious to bestow upon him. Oh! you need not thank me" (he had no intention of doing so); "I am always glad to oblige an old friend. And pray do not hurry away; I hear the voice of my gossip, Barbara Sweeting, and presently the rest of London will flock round me to repeat what every one is saying about me, and find out something new to tell in their turn. You, who have given me so much information, can help me to entertain them." *CHAPTER XXII* *IN A CHAIRMAN’S LIVERY* Lady Barbara rustled into the room in the most expansive of hoops and the loftiest of heads of lace and feathers, the height, literally, of the mode. "Prue, you sly minx, I have come to give you the scolding you deserve," she began, and half-mirthful, half-reproachful, was about to embrace her when her glance fell upon Lord Beachcombe. She started back and turned her eyes from one to the other with exaggerated disapproval, behind which lurked the excitement of the keen hunter on a promising trail. Beachcombe’s dark face flushed with an embarrassment that he vainly attempted to conceal under the elaborate politeness of his greeting, but Prue, all innocent smiles, and thoroughly enjoying a situation which put her inquisitor to confusion, flew into her dear friend’s arms. "How are you, dearest Bab?" she cried. "I am simply perishing for a long, long talk with you. Oh! I have _so_ much to tell you—" "Not so much as you think, perhaps, wicked one," retorted Barbara, still reproachfully, "but I own I am dying for the key to your mysterious adventures." "Have you, too, come to cross-question me about last night?" cried Prue petulantly. "Before I was out of my bed, the house was besieged. Ah! here is Peggie, who can tell you more about my visitors than I can, for half of them came while I was yet asleep." "’Tis not your visitors I want to hear about, Prue, but yourself. To think, that with such a frolic to the fore, my Prue should have left me without a hint of what was happening! How can I ever forgive it?" "Lady Brooke should be pardoned all things for the sake of her heroism," said Beachcombe, with cold irony. "Yet it seems a pity that she should have braved alone the dangers so many of her friends would willingly have shared."