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:—­

“Mr Richard S., having attempted, in a letter left behind him for that purpose, to account for his scandalous method of running away from this place, by insinuations derogating from my character and that of a young lady, innocent as far as relates to me or my knowledge, since which he has neither taken notice of my letters, nor even informed his own family of the place where he has hid himself, I cannot longer think he deserves the treatment of a gentleman, than in this public manner to post him as a Liar and a treacherous Scoundrel.—­THOMAS MATTHEWS.”

Such a public insult could, of course, only have one issue.  Sheridan promptly challenged Matthews to a duel, the result of which was that the Major was compelled to make an apology, as public as his insult.  But, so far was he from penitence, that within a few weeks he demanded a second meeting—­and this proved a much more serious matter for Sheridan.

The rivals met the following morning on Claverton Down; and after a few furious exchanges both swords were broken, and the opponents were struggling together on the ground.  Matthews, however, being much the stronger, was able to pin Sheridan down, and with a piece of the broken sword stabbed him repeatedly in the face.  “Beg your life, and I will spare it,” he demanded of the prostrate and defenceless man.  “I will neither beg it, nor receive it from such a villain,” was the unflinching answer.