



Produced by Al Haines.





[Illustration: "Permit your slave——" _Page_ 220.]




                            *The Imprudence
                                of Prue*


                         _*By*_* SOPHIE FISHER*



                        With Four Illustrations
                           By HERMAN PFEIFER



                           A. L. BURT COMPANY
                          PUBLISHERS NEW YORK




                             COPYRIGHT 1911
                       THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY




                               *CONTENTS*

CHAPTER

I  The Price of a Kiss
II  Lady Drumloch
III  Sir Geoffrey’s Arrival
IV  The Money-Lender Intervenes
V  A Widow on Monday
VI  A Matter of Title
VII  A Wedding-Ring for a Kiss
VIII  An Order for a Parson
IX  The Wedding
X  The Folly of Yesterday
XI  The Morrow’s Wakening
XII  The Price of a Birthright
XIII  The Sealed Packet
XIV  A Pair of Gloves
XV  The Red Domino
XVI  At the Unmasking
XVII  Lady Barbara’s News
XVIII  The Den of the Highwayman
XIX  In the Duchess’ Apartments
XX  A Threat and a Promise
XXI  An Affair of Family
XXII  In A Chairman’s Livery
XXIII  The Parson Sells a Secret
XXIV  A Supper for Three
XXV  A Confession
XXVI  Preparations for a Journey
XXVII  A Different Highwayman
XXVIII  The Dearest Treasure




                        *THE IMPRUDENCE OF PRUE*



                              *CHAPTER I*

                         *THE PRICE OF A KISS*


"Stand and deliver!"

The words rang out in the gathering darkness of the February evening.
The jaded horses, exhausted with dragging a cumbrous chariot through the
miry lanes and rugged by-roads of the rough moorland, obeyed the command
with promptitude, disregarding the lash of the postboy and the valiant
oaths of a couple of serving-men in the rumble.

"Keep still, unless you wish me to blow out what you are pleased to
consider your brains," said the highwayman.  "My pistols have an awkward
habit of going off of their own accord when I am not instantly obeyed—so
don’t provoke them."

The postilion became as still as a statue and the footmen, under cover
of the self-acting pistols, descended, grumbling but unresisting,
yielded up their rusty blunderbusses with a transparent show of
reluctance and withdrew to a respectful distance, while the highwayman
dismounted, opened the carriage door and throwing the light of a lantern
within, revealed the shrinking forms of two women muffled in cloaks and
hoods.

One of them uttered a shriek of terror when the door was opened and
incoherently besought the highwayman to spare two lone, defenseless
women.

The highwayman thrust his head in and peered round eagerly, as though in
search of other passengers. Then, pulling off his slouch-brimmed hat, he
revealed a pair of dark eyes that gleamed fiercely from behind a mask,
and as much of a bronzed and weather-beaten face as it left uncovered.
Black hair, loosely gathered in a ribbon and much disordered by wind and
rain, added considerably to the wildness of his aspect, and the
uncertain light of the lantern flickered upon several weapons besides
the pistols he carried so carelessly.

"I shall not hurt you, Madam," he exclaimed impatiently.  "Your money
and jewels are all I seek.  I expected to find a very different booty
here and must hasten elsewhere lest I miss it altogether by this
confounded mishap.  So let me advise you to waste neither my time nor
your own breath in useless lamentations, but hasten to hand out your
purses and diamonds."

"We have neither, Mr. Highwayman," said the other lady in a clear,
musical voice, quite free from tremor.  "I am a poor widow without a
penny in the world, flying from my creditors to take refuge with a
relative almost as poor as myself.  This is my companion—alack for her!
The wage I owe her might make her passing rich if ever ’twere paid—but
it never will be."

"Do poor widows travel in coach and four with serving-men and maids?"
demanded the highwayman with an incredulous laugh.  "Come, ladies, I am
well used to these excuses.  Do not put me to the disagreeable necessity
of setting you down in the mud while I search your carriage
and—mayhap—your fair selves."

The lady threw back her hooded cloak, revealing a face and form of rare
beauty, and extended two white hands and arms, bare to the elbow and
entirely devoid of ornament.  In one hand she held a little purse
through whose silken meshes glittered a few pieces of money.

"This is all the money I have in the wide world," she said, in a voice
of pathetic sweetness.  "Take it, if you will, and search for more if
you think it worth while—and if you find anything, prithee, share it
with me!"

But the highwayman scarcely heard her.  Through his mask his eyes were
fixed upon her beautiful face with a devouring admiration of which she
was quite unconscious.  Not that such an expression would have seemed at
all extraordinary to her, or otherwise than the natural tribute of any
masculine creature to the beauty she valued at its full worth.

"Keep your purse, Madam," he said, and his voice had lost its harshness;
"I will take but one thing from you—something you will not miss, but
that a monarch might prize—a kiss from those lovely lips."

"A kiss, rascal!  Do you know what you ask?" she exclaimed, her
sweetness vanishing in haughty anger.  "Something I shall not miss,
forsooth! What can—"

"Oh! kiss him, Prue; kiss him and let us be gone!" implored her
companion.  "We shall miss the mail-coach at the cross-roads, and then
what will become of us?"

The highwayman leaned against the open carriage-door and watched the
struggling emotions flickering over the face of the widow.  Anger and
disgust were succeeded by scornful mirth, and at last, with a gesture of
indescribably haughty grace, she extended her hand, palm downward.

"My hand, Sir Highwayman," she said loftily, "has been deemed not
unworthy of royal kisses!"

"My plebeian lips would not venture where a king’s have feasted," was
the mocking retort. "But whoever in future may kiss your lips must come
after Robin Freemantle, the Highwayman. So, sweet one, by your leave."
He bent suddenly over her and kissed her boldly on the scarlet blossom
of her mouth.

She drew back, gasping with anger and amazement. "How dare you?" she
almost screamed.

He stood a moment as if half-dazed by his own audacity, then closed the
carriage-door and replaced his beaver on his head.

"Good night, Ladies," he cried in a tone of reckless gaiety.  "A
pleasant journey to London and a merry time at court, and as ’tis ill
junketing on an empty purse, accept mine in exchange for yours."

With which he flung a heavy wallet into the carriage and snatching the
little silken trifle from Prue’s hand, sprang on his horse and was
quickly lost in the gloom of night.

"Insolent varlet!" cried Prue passionately. "Would I were a man to beat
him to death!"  And she burst into a flood of angry tears.

"Console yourself, sweet cousin," said her companion coaxingly.  "You
have saved our jewels for the second time to-day—first by outwitting a
sheriff and now by cajoling a highwayman.  After all, what is a kiss?
You have just as many left for Sir Geoffrey as you had before you were
robbed of that one."

"That is all very well," cried Prue, half laughing and half tearful,
"but how would you have liked it if it had happened to you?"

"Faith, I’m not sure I should have made such a fuss!  After thirty one
may well be grateful for the kisses of a handsome young gallant—for I
could see he was young, and I’ll warrant me he was comely too—even if he
is Robin Freemantle, the highwayman."

"For shame, Cousin Peggie, an’ if you love me, never remind me of this,"
replied Prue, with a touch of irritation.  "I would far rather have lost
my few last jewels than have suffered such an insult."

"So would not I," laughed the incorrigible cousin.  "What with play and
the haberdasher all I have left in the world is contained in the little
box under my feet, and I should count that cheaply saved at the price of
a kiss."

"You were not asked to pay the price," said Prue coldly.  Then,
thrusting her head out of the window, she relieved her pent-up feelings
by soundly berating the cowardly serving-men who had yielded without a
blow to a force so inferior and were now wasting precious time hunting
for their useless weapons instead of hastening to the near-by crossroads
to meet the mail-coach in which the two ladies proposed traveling from
Yorkshire to London.

The two men clambered back into the rumble, somewhat shamefaced, and
each striving by muttered disclaimers to reject the charge of cowardice
in favor of the other.  The postilion, suddenly galvanized into
activity, roused the horses with strange oaths and cries and fierce
cracklings of the whip. Prudence closed the window and retired into the
voluminous shelter of her cloak, and the interrupted journey was
resumed.




                              *CHAPTER II*

                            *LADY DRUMLOCH*


No further adventures overtook the two ladies. The mail-coach picked
them up at the crossroads and carried them to London in course of time,
where they were soon safely housed with their grandmother, Lady
Drumloch.

My Lady Drumloch was, as all the world knows, a very great lady, and
back in the days of King Charles the Second had been a beauty and a
toast. The daughter of a duke and the wife of an earl, she had queened
it in two courts, had gone into exile with King James, intrigued and
plotted with the Jacobites, and finally, having lost husband and son and
fortune in her devotion to a hopeless cause, had made her peace with
Queen Anne and returned to England to eke out her last years in the
soul-crushing poverty of the great.

But as with her she brought her two granddaughters, the Honorable
Margaret Moffat and Lady Prudence Wynne, her meager little house on the
outskirts of May fair soon became not only the Mecca of other Jacobites
as aristocratic and as poor as herself, but of many who were neither
Jacobites nor in reduced circumstances.  Among both classes the Lady
Prudence, though but fifteen, soon found courtiers to pick and choose
from.  The saucy child with her skin of milk and roses, her tangle of
dark curling locks and her wonderful blue eyes, was already possessed of
that mysterious charm of femininity by which the world has been swayed
since the days of Eve.

To gratify her grandmother’s ambition, and at the same time emancipate
herself from the restrictions of the school-room, she married the
Viscount Brooke, heir of the Earl of Overbridge.  But the marriage
resulted disastrously.  The viscount had long before exhausted his
private means, and although his father, hoping that marriage would sober
and settle him, made a sufficiently liberal allowance to the young
couple, a few months of reckless extravagance and gaiety plunged them in
an ocean of debt, from which the viscount, in a fit of delirium,
extricated himself by means of a bullet in his brain, leaving Prue a
widow at sixteen with no home but her grandmother’s little house in
Mayfair, and not a penny beyond the grudging bounty of her
father-in-law.

Still, it was delightful to be a widow, and, consequently, free from all
authority.  Having curtailed her mourning within the scantiest limits,
she returned to society with renewed ardor, where her youth and beauty,
enhanced by her widowhood, secured her a flattering welcome.  She played
the hostess in Lady Drumloch’s shabby drawing-rooms, filling them with
laughter, scandal and love-making. She chaperoned Margaret Moffat, who
was ten years her senior and who loved her with the infatuation one
sometimes, if rarely, observes in a very plain woman for a very
beautiful one.

Poor as she notoriously was, the oft-repeated rumors of Prue’s
engagement to one or another of her wealthy admirers enabled her to run
into debt time and again for such necessaries of existence as
fashionable dresses and costly jewels, for which she certainly never
expected to pay out of her own pocket.  Nay, even money-lenders,
beguiled by her bright eyes and her unquestionably promising matrimonial
prospects, had furnished the sinews of war (for which her future husband
would have to pay right royally), and this despite the fact that the
Lady Prudence Brooke, widowed at sixteen, was still a widow at
two-and-twenty.

Lady Drumloch’s granddaughters were not expected at her town-house, and
when the hired cabriolet in which they arrived drew up at her door, the
ancient butler was divided between joy at the sight of the two bright
young faces, and trepidation as to the welcome they might expect from
the higher powers.  Mrs. Lowton, my lady’s waiting-woman, was troubled
by no such complex emotions.  She made little attempt to conceal her own
dissatisfaction or to disguise the fact that the old countess was in no
humor for gay company.

"My lady has had an awful attack of gout," she averred, "and the doctors
have ordered the strictest quiet.  The least agitation might be fatal."

"We will be as quiet as mice, Lowton," said Lady Prudence,
ostentatiously tiptoeing across the narrow hall and up the steep stairs.
"James, pay the coachman and let me know how much I owe you."

The butler obeyed, though with no great alacrity. "Her ladyship ain’t
long getting back to her old tricks," he muttered with rather a wry
smile, as he hunted through his pockets for the coach-hire. "I gave the
man two shillings—and sixpence for himself," he said, coming back
promptly.  "I suppose your ladyship has not forgotten that before you
went to Yorkshire—"

"Oh! never mind that, James," she interrupted hastily.  "Let bygones be
bygones, and when I come into my fortune you will see whether I forget
anything.  Come, Peggie, let us get to bed.  I am fainting for want of
sleep."

"I am fainting, too," retorted Miss Moffat, "but more with hunger than
sleep.  Lowton, for the love of Heaven, order some breakfast, and that
speedily."

"I’ll see what I can do, Miss Margaret," said Lowton, without
enthusiasm, "but her ladyship keeps us closer than ever, and I doubt if
there’s anything for breakfast but milk and bread."

The cousins crept softly up to the little room on the top floor, where
their dismantled beds and the bare floors gave so much evidence of
disuse and so little promise of hospitality that the most courageous
hearts might have sunk a little.

"We were better off at Bleakmoor, even with the bailiffs in attendance,"
said Prue piteously.

"Mayhap—but there we were out of help’s way, and here, if we will—or
rather if you will—there is succor at hand," said the undaunted
Peggie—"and even while I speak of rescue, here comes my dear old Lowton
with food for the starving and sheets and blankets for the weary.  Come,
coz, eat and sleep, and when you wake you will be ready for any
emergency."

It was evening before the tired travelers rose, and, ransacking
wardrobes and closets for the wherewithal to replace their soiled and
dusty traveling attire, made themselves presentable for the inevitable
visit of ceremony to their grandmother.

Quiet as they had been, the old lady had become aware of their arrival
long before the faithful Lowton ventured, in lugubrious whispers, to
communicate the news.

"There is no necessity, my good Lowton, for you to apologize for my
granddaughters," Lady Drumloch had interrupted, almost before the first
word was uttered.  "No doubt I shall have to listen to half-a-dozen
different stories before I get at the true cause of this visit, so you
may as well spare yourself the trouble of inventing excuses for you know
not what.  Let me know when the travelers rise, and I will receive them
and hear what they have to say for themselves."

The venerable countess lay in a huge four-poster bed, propped high with
pillows scarcely whiter than her waxen face, upon which still lingered
some of the beauty and all of the indomitable hauteur of the belle of
half-a-century ago.  Her scant and snowy locks were concealed under a
cap of priceless lace and ruffles of the same fell over her small
ivory-white hands.  At the ceremonious announcement of the Viscountess
Brooke and the Honorable Miss Moffat, she slightly moved her head on the
pillow and turned her bright, dark eyes from one to the other.

"To what do I owe the honor of this visit, my lady Viscountess?" she
inquired dryly.

"Partly, dear Grandmother, to our anxiety about your ladyship’s health,"
said Prudence, sweeping so deep a curtsey that she seemed to be falling
on her knees, "and partly because a whole long year in the wilds of
Yorkshire hath made us homesick."

"A whole long year in your brother-in-law’s house, gaming, dancing
and—unless I am misinformed—play