ng, if you lay a finger on me I'll knock you
down,' said he.

Most joyfully Mr. Sullivan Smith uttered a low melodious cry. 'For a
specimen of manners, in an assembly of ladies and gentlemen... I ask
ye!' he addressed the ring about him, to put his adversary entirely in
the wrong before provoking the act of war. And then, as one intending
gently to remonstrate, he was on the point of stretching out his finger
to the shoulder of Mr. Malkin, when Redworth seized his arm, saying: 'I
'm your man: me first: you're due to me.'

Mr. Sullivan Smith beheld the vanishing of his foe in a cloud of faces.
Now was he wroth on patently reasonable grounds. He threatened Saxondom.
Man up, man down, he challenged the race of short-legged, thickset,
wooden-gated curmudgeons: and let it be pugilism if their white livers
shivered at the notion of powder and ball. Redworth, in the struggle to
haul him away, received a blow from him. 'And you've got it! you would
have it!' roared the Celt.

'Excuse yourself to the company for a misdirected effort,' Redworth
said; and he observed generally: 'No Irish gentleman strikes a blow in
good company.'

'But that's true as Writ! And I offer excuses--if you'll come along
with me and a couple of friends. The thing has been done before by
torchlight--and neatly.'

'Come along, and come alone,' said Redworth.

A way was cleared for them. Sir Lukin hurried up to Redworth, who had no
doubt of his ability to manage Mr. Sullivan Smith.

He managed that fine-hearted but purely sensational fellow so well that
Lady Dunstane and Diana, after hearing in some anxiety of the hubbub
below, beheld them entering the long saloon amicably, with the nods and
looks of gentlemen quietly accordant.

A little later, Lady Dunstane questioned Redworth, and he smoothed her
apprehensions, delivering himself, much to her comfort, thus: 'In
no case would any lady's name have been raised. The whole affair was
nonsensical. He's a capital fellow of a kind, capable of behaving like
a man of the world and a gentleman. Only he has, or thinks he has, like
lots of his countrymen, a raw wound--something that itches to be grazed.
Champagne on that!... Irishmen, as far as I have seen of them, are, like
horses, bundles of nerves; and you must manage them, as you do with all
nervous creatures, with firmness, but good temper. You must never get
into a fury of the nerves yourself with them. Spur and whip they don't
want; they'll be off wi