"
"Let him choose. I will fight him with cannon--or with soap-bubbles,"
answered De Malfort, lolling back in his chair, tilted at an angle of
forty-five, and drumming a gay dance tune with his finger-tips on the
table. "'Tis a foolish imbroglio from first to last: and only his lordship
and I know how foolish. He came here to provoke a quarrel, and I must
indulge him. Come, Lady Lucretia"--he turned to his fair friend, as he
unbuckled his sword and flung it on the table--"it is my place to lead you
to your chair. Colonel, you and your friend will find me below stairs in
front of the Holbein Gate."
"You are forgetting your winnings," remonstrated the lady, pointing to the
pile of gold.
"The lackeys will not forget them when they clear the room," answered De
Malfort, putting her hand through his arm, and leaving the money on the
table.
Ten minutes later Fareham and De Malfort were standing front to front in
the glare of four torches, held by a brace of her ladyship's lackeys who
had been impressed into the service, and the colder light of a moon that
rode high in the blue-black of a wintry heaven. There was not a sound but
the ripple of the unseen river, and the distant cry of a watchman in Petty
France, till the clash of swords began.
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