"'Tain't no good," shouted Pridgeon, as he lashed the horse to a gallop. "'Tis only a mile afore we reaches Long Hill and they'll catch us walkin' there." "I warn you, madam," said Mr. Ripple calmly, while the postchaise rattled through the storm, "I warn you that I shall certainly shoot once, if not twice." But Mrs. Courteen had fainted away and only half a dozen pins released from their responsibleness whispered a faint and ineffective answer. _Chapter the Thirty-third_ THE HIGHWAYMEN The rumour of Phyllida's elopement took definite shape just as the candles were being lighted for the nuts and wine. It lent quite a flavour even to the inferior Port that disgraced most of the dinner-tables at Curtain Wells. And if a flavour was lent to moderately bad wine, what a truly celestial aroma was given off by the fragrant pots of tea in the parlours. Curtain Wells was always famous for the finest blends, and I venture to think that the sad affair of Miss Courteen inspired every hostess to a perfection of art unequalled before or since. Never were the gentlemen so quick to follow the ladies from the spent dinner. Moreover, the absence of Beau Ripple permitted a recklessness of conjecture, a venom of Innuendo that would have made the rumour famous, even had it proved devoid of the slightest foundation. Many inclined to the theory that Mr. Ripple had arranged the prologue to suit himself, and vowed they had seen fervent stares exchanged between him and Mrs. Courteen. One inventive young gentleman started a report that Mr. Vernon was the Pretender; but this was contradicted by old Lady Loch Lomond who, having been one of the ladies-in-waiting at St. Germain's and watched the young prince in his bath, was positive that Mr. Vernon did not resemble him at all. The young gentleman's ingenious suggestion lent a momentary glamour to the heroine of the affair, but with the destruction of his story by Lady Loch Lomond, publick attention was again concentrated upon Beau Ripple. An extravagant explanation of his roundabout method of courtship was found in a whispered legend that in early youth he had married one of the daughters of the Grand Turk and escaping from the turbaned alliance four months afterwards through the friendly offices of a fig merchant from Smyrna who smuggled him out of the Bosphorous and landed him at Lyme Regis in Dorsetshire, had spent the rest of his enforced celibacy in dread of vengeful scimitars.