agu!" when they clapped eyes on me.
Here were Lord March, George Selwyn, Sir James Craven, Topham Beauclerc,
and young Winton Westerleigh; Lady Di Davenport and the Countess Dowager
of Rocksboro; the Hon. Isabel Stanford, Mistress Antoinette Westerleigh,
and others as well known to me. They had taken us at unawares, and as
Creagh would have put it in an Irish bull the only retreat possible for us
was an advance through the enemy. At present they paid no more attention
to us than they would to the wooden negro in front of a tobacco shop, but
at any moment detection might confront me. Faith, here was a predicament!
Conceive me, with a hundred guineas set upon my head, thrust into the very
company in all England I would most have avoided.

And of all the people in the world they chanced on me as a topic of
conversation. George Selwyn, strolling up and down the room, for want of
something better to do, stopped in front of that confounded placard and
began reading it aloud. Now I don't mind being described as "Tall, strong,
well-built, and extremely good-looking; brown eyes and waving hair like
ilk; carries himself with distinction;" but I grue at being set down as a
common cutpurse, especially when I had taken the trouble to send back Sir
Robert's jewelry at some risk to myself.

"Wonder what Montagu has done with himself," queried Beauclerc after
Selwyn had finished.

"Or what Volney has done with him," muttered March behind his hand. "I'll
lay two to one in ponies he never lives to cross another man."

"You're wrong, March, if you think Volney finished him. He's alive all
right. I heard it from Denman that he got safe across to France. Pity
Volney didn't pink the fellow through the heart for his d----d impudence
in interfering; not that I can stand Volney either, curse the popinjay!"
snarled Craven sourly.

"If Montagu reaches the continent, 'twill be a passover the Jews who hold
his notes will not relish," suggested Selwyn in his sleepy way.

A pink-and-white-faced youth shimmering in cream satin was the animated
heart of another group. His love for scandal and his facility for
acquiring the latest tidbit made him the delight of many an old tabby cat.
Now his eyes shone with the joy of imparting a delicious morsel.

"Egad, then, you're all wrong," he was saying in a shrill falsetto. "Stap
me, the way of it was this! I have it on the best of authority and it
comes direct, rot me if it doesn't! Sir Robert's man, Watk