Peggie assured her that it was much better as it was and that nothing would have come of such a self-betrayal but scandal and disgrace that would have broken their grandmother’s heart and banished them for ever from society. Then she kissed and petted her until she fell asleep, much as a grieved and frightened child might do, with long-drawn sighs and broken sobs gradually softening into the tranquil respiration of dreamless repose. But there was the morrow’s waking to come, and it came to Prue with a sudden sweep of consciousness and recollection that scorched her brain and stopped the beating of her heart. The clock on the mantel chimed the half-hour, and starting up in a panic she saw that the hands pointed to half-past seven. And Robin Freemantle was to die at eight o’clock. Even now he was on the way to Tyburn, shackled to other malefactors in the dreadful cart which he would never leave alive. Even now the mob was jeering him and his wretched companions and gloating over the prospect of the "last dying speeches and confessions" which were expected to play so important a part in the morning’s entertainment. Four of them were to be hanged that morning—two coiners, a house-breaker and—_Prue’s Husband_! The hideousness of the thought struck her again with an agony of shame that tingled in every nerve and for the moment dried the tears upon her burning face. She heard Peggie moving in the next room and sprang out of bed, dashing cold water over her face and head in feverish haste to wash off the tears and cool down the turgid blood that throbbed in her temples and crimsoned her cheeks. Just then the clock struck eight. A neighboring church-clock took up the chime, and then another at a little distance. It was Robin’s death-knell. Prue groped blindly a few steps and then, with a low, wailing cry, fell on the floor in a deathly swoon. Peggie ran in and by main force lifted her up and laid her on the bed. The application of such simple remedies as cold water and hartshorn soon brought back consciousness, and with it floods of tears and such heart-broken lamentations that Peggie began to ask herself whether there could be any magic in the marriage service to make a widow mourn so bitterly for a husband she had only seen on two occasions, and masked on one of those! She wisely refrained from investigating the source of Prue’s emotion however, rightly judging that the more completely she gave way to it the quicker it would wear itself out. In fact, after an hour or so the violence of her grief subsided, leaving her pale and languid and much disposed to pity herself as in some mysterious way very cruelly used by fate and altogether a most interesting victim. In this frame of mind she insisted upon rummaging out a black dress and arranging her curly locks in as subdued a fashion as their luxuriance and natural wilfulness would submit to. Then she permitted Peggie to lead her down-stairs.