the thrust and parry of swords.
Without wishing to address the actress--and thereby risk a public
rebuff--it was, nevertheless, impossible for the hot-blooded
Southerner to submit to peremptory restraint. Who had made the soldier
his taskmaster? He read Saint-Prosper's purpose and was not slow to
retaliate.

"If I am not mistaken, yonder is our divinity of the lane," said the
patroon softly. "Permit me." And he strove to pass.

The soldier did not move.

"You are blocking my way, Monsieur," continued the other, sharply.

"Not if it lies the other way."

"This way, or that way, how does it concern you?" retorted the land
baron.

"If you seek further to annoy a lady whom you have already sufficiently
wronged, it is any man's concern."

"Especially if he has followed her across the country," sneered
Mauville. "Besides, since when have actresses become so chary of their
favors?" In his anger the land baron threw out intimations he would
have challenged from other lips. "Has the stage then become a holy
convent?"

"You stamped yourself a scoundrel some time ago," said the soldier
slowly, as though weighing each word, "and now show yourself a coward
when you malign a young girl, without father, brother--"

"Or lover!" interrupted the land baron. "Perhaps, however, you were
only traveling to see the country! A grand tour, enlivened with
studies of human nature, as well as glimpses of scenery!"

"Have you anything further with me?" interjected Saint-Prosper,
curtly.

The patroon's blood coursed, burning, through his veins; the other's
contemptuous manner stung him more fiercely than language.

"Yes," he said, meaningly, his eyes challenging Saint-Prosper's. "Have
you been at Spedella's fencing rooms? Are you in practice?"

Saint-Prosper hesitated a moment and the land baron's face fell. Was
it possible the other would refuse to meet him? But he would not let
him off easily; there were ways to force--and suddenly the words of
the marquis recurring to him, he surveyed the soldier, disdainfully.

"Gad! you must come of a family of cowards and traitors! But you shall
fight or--the public becomes arbiter!" And he half raised his arm
threateningly.

The soldier's tanned cheek was now as pale as a moment before it had
been flushed; his mouth set resolutely, as though fighting back some
weakness. With lowering brows and darkening glance he regarded the
land baron.

"I was thinking," he said at length, with an effo