The ceremony was quickly performed. Robert Gregory and Prudence duly accepted each other as man and wife for all the vicissitudes of their mortal life, severally vowed love, honor and all the rest of it, pledged themselves by the giving and receiving of a ring, to share each other’s worldly goods, and finally received the blessing of the church, borne on the gin-flavored breath of Parson Goodridge. A short ten minutes having sufficed to make the Viscount Brooke’s widow the highwayman, Robin Freemantle’s, wife, the parson pocketed his dog-eared book, also a generous fee from the bridegroom, and took his departure. "Do not forget to keep your own counsel," Sir Geoffrey warned him. "This has been a good morning’s work for you, Master Goodridge, and there is better to come when your testimony is wanted, if the secret be well kept." "I shall keep it, never fear; I shall keep it," mumbled the degraded creature, already drunk in anticipation of the glorious possibilities of a pocket so unusually well lined. "A secret is the only thing I have ever learned to keep." And he disappeared, chuckling at his own wit. "Now," said Sir Geoffrey, turning to Prudence with a smile, "all that remains is the pleasant ceremony of congratulating the bridegroom and saluting the bride, and then we had better be going." Prue was standing a little apart, with down-cast eyes and a certain trouble in her pensive face, that almost foretokened tears. She drew back a step at Sir Geoffrey’s words, and put up her hand, palm-outward. "Let us have no more mockery," she said coldly. "We have made ourselves quite contemptible enough, without further buffoonery. So far from congratulating the bridegroom, we should do better to apologize to him." She stamped her foot slightly but positively, as he seemed disposed to persist. "As to the bride, sir, for once she is in no humor for folly. Be kind enough to take my cousin out and find a chair for her; then you can return and see me to my carriage." "And leave you here?" he exclaimed. "Where else would you leave me?" she retorted, in a jeering tone. "Are you afraid to leave me with my _husband_?" Sir Geoffrey would still have lingered to remonstrate, but Peggie, whose ready sympathy divined her cousin’s motive, placed her hand within his arm, and drawing her veil closely over her face, announced herself ready for departure. "The gentleman is not _my_ husband," she remarked demurely. "It would scarcely be proper to leave _me_ alone with him, and you can not escort us both at once." But when they were alone, the words of extenuation Prue intended to speak, seemed hard of utterance. There was a little lump in her throat, and she could think of no commonplace form of excuse that seemed to fit the occasion. Robin gazed at her as though he wished to fill his whole soul with her image. Yet, although they were scarcely twenty inches apart, he made no attempt to touch her.