stay in London a boat was taken to Dunkirk, and the journey resumed
towards Lille.

It was during this last stage of the journey that Sheridan disclosed his
hand. With consummate, if questionable, cleverness he explained that he
could not, in honour, leave her in a convent except as his wife; that he
had loved her since first he met her more than anything else in life,
and that he could not bear the thought of her fair name being sullied by
the scandal that would surely follow this journey taken in his company.

To such plausible arguments, pleaded by one who confessed that he loved
her, and to whom she was (as she now realised) far from indifferent,
Miss Linley could not remain deaf. And before the coach had travelled
many miles from Calais the runaways found an accommodating priest to
make them one. The would-be nun thus dramatically ended her journey to
the convent at the altar.

"It was not," she wrote to him later, "your person that
gained my affection. No, it was that delicacy, that
tender interest which you seemed to take in my welfare,
that were the motives which induced me to love you."

The honeymoon that followed these strange nuptials was of short
duration; for, a few days later, Mr Linley arrived, in a high state of
anger, to reclaim and carry off his runaway daughter; and Sheridan was
left to follow ignominiously in their wake. When he reached Bath it was
to find his hands full. During his absence the irate Major, quick to
discover his perfidy, had published the following notice in the local
_Chronicle_:--