But Sir Percy was staring sleepily at the Vicomte for a moment or two, through his partly closed heavy lids, then he smothered another yawn, stretched his long limbs, and turned leisurely away.

“Lud love you, sir,” he muttered good-humouredly, “demmit, young man, what’s the good of your sword to me?”

What the Vicomte thought and felt at that moment, when that long-limbed Englishman treated him with such marked insolence, might fill volumes of sound reflections…. What he said resolved itself into a single articulate word, for all the others were choked in his throat by his surging wrath—

“A duel, Monsieur,” he stammered.

Once more Blakeney turned, and from his high altitude looked down on the choleric little man before him; but not even for a second did he seem to lose his own imperturbable good-humour. He laughed his own pleasant and inane laugh, and burying his slender, long hands into the capacious pockets of his overcoat, he said leisurely—

“A duel? La! is that what he meant? Odd’s fish! you are a bloodthirsty young ruffian. Do you want to make a hole in a law-abiding man? … As for me, sir, I never fight duels,” he added, as he placidly sat down and stretched his long, lazy legs out before him. “Demmed uncomfortable things, duels, ain’t they, Tony?”

Now the Vicomte had no doubt vaguely heard that in England the fashion of duelling amongst gentlemen had been suppressed by the law with a very stern hand; still to him, a Frenchman, whose notions of bravery and honour were based upon a code that had centuries of tradition to back it, the spectacle of a gentleman actually refusing to fight a duel was a little short of an enormity. In his mind he vaguely pondered whether he should strike that long-legged Englishman in the face and call him a coward, or whether such conduct in a lady’s presence might be deemed ungentlemanly, when Marguerite happily interposed.

“I pray you, Lord Tony,” she said in that gentle, sweet, musical voice of hers, “I pray you play the peacemaker. The child is bursting with rage, and,” she added with a soupçon of dry sarcasm, “might do Sir Percy an injury.” She laughed a mocking little laugh, which, however, did not in the least disturb her husband’s placid equanimity. “The British turkey has had the day,” she said. “Sir Percy would provoke all the saints in the calendar and keep his temper the while.”

But already Blakeney, good-humoured as ever, had joined in the laugh against himself.

“Demmed smart that now, wasn’t it?” he said, turning pleasantly to the Vicomte. “Clever woman my wife, sir…. You will find that out if you live long enough in England.”

“Sir Percy is in the right, Vicomte,” here interposed Lord Antony, laying a friendly hand on the young Frenchman’s shoulder. “It would hardly be fitting that you should commence your career in England by provoking him to a duel.”

For a moment longer the Vicomte hesitated, then with a slight shrug of the shoulders directed against the extraordinary code of honour prevailing in this fog-ridden island, he said with becoming dignity,—

“Ah, well! if Monsieur is satisfied, I have no griefs. You, mi’lor’, are our protector. If I have done wrong, I withdraw myself.”

“Aye, do!” rejoined Blakeney, with a long sigh of satisfaction, “withdraw yourself over there. Demmed excitable little puppy,” he added under his breath. “Faith, Ffoulkes, if that’s a specimen of the goods you and your friends bring over from France, my advice to you is, drop ’em ’mid Channel, my friend, or I