e. All at once he catches sight of Mamsell Gabrielle, and chuckles
quite out loud. 'Ha! Harry, old boy!' he cries; 'what an old fox you
are! do you keep such doves as these in your hen-house? Foi de
gentilhomme!'--and he laughed so insolently that I felt the blood rush
into my face. 'Let us have this dove at supper, I say, with a good
glass of Burgundy: you have plucked it long ago, of course--' and then
another great roar of laughter. My very heart stood still--I looked at
the poor girl--she was as white as the wall--and my master looked--Sir,
I cannot tell you how he looked. He went close up to the Englishman,
where he stood laughing, and said out loud: 'You will ask the young
lady's pardon, sir, this moment--and then you will leave the room. I
can protect my people from the insolence of any man, be he who he
may!'"

"The Lord did not seem to hear him, and kept staring at the girl. 'By
Jove!' he said, speaking thick with drink; 'deuced neat built she is!
and I have been in the house a week and more, and never yet--Ah!
Harry--I say--d--d sly old fox is Harry. Come, dear, don't let me
frighten you.' And he stretched out his arm to take her round the
waist, while the poor thing stood motionless against the wall, as if
she had been struck by lightning--when we heard a sharp sound whistling
through the air, and with a great oath the Lord drew back his hand. The
count had drawn a broad red stripe across it with his riding-whip.

"Sir, I need not tell you all that passed that night; only, that by
seven o'clock next morning my master had fought the stranger, without
seconds, at a place they call the wolfs gap. We heard the crack of the
four shots in the still February morning, and half an hour afterwards,
the count came home bleeding from his left hand. He did not send for a
surgeon, but had it bound up by his valet, Mr. Pierre, who had been
with him on the ground, and told us that the Lord had not come off so
easily; but he had been able to get on horseback and ride on to the
next town.

"What that poor thing,--Gabrielle,--said to it all? Good Lord! She held
her peace, as if she had really been turned to stone that evening--and
what surprised me rather--she never thought of going to thank her
master for what he had done; but she never talked of leaving now.

"From that morning when we heard the shots, she was so changed, I
should scarcely have known her. She went through her work as usual, and
was neither glad nor sad, o