'They shut themselves up in a room, and there were no seconds,' the
lawyer answered, beginning to pity her. 'I believe that Mr. Pomeroy gave
the provocation, and that may bring your ladyship's son off. But, on the
other hand--'

'On the other hand, what? What?' she muttered.

'Mr. Dunborough had horsewhipped a man that was in the other's company.'

'A man?'

'It was Mr. Thomasson.'

Her ladyship's hands went up. Perhaps she remembered that but for her
the tutor would not have been there. Then 'Sink you! I wish he had
flogged you all!' she shrieked, and, turning stiffly, she went mumbling
and cursing down the stairs, the lace lappets of her head trembling,
and her gold-headed cane now thumping the floor, now waving uncertainly
in the air.

* * * * *

A quarter of an hour earlier, in the apartments for which Mr. Fishwick
was bound when her ladyship intercepted him, two men stood talking at a
window. The room was the best in the Castle Inn--a lofty panelled
chamber with a southern aspect looking upon the smooth sward and
sweet-briar hedges of Lady Hertford's terrace, and commanding beyond
these a distant view of the wooded slopes of Savernake. The men spoke in
subdued tones, and more than once looked towards the door of an adjacent
room, as if they feared to disturb some one.

'My dear Sir George,' the elder said, after he had listened patiently to
a lengthy relation, in the course of which he took snuff a dozen times,
'your mind is quite made up, I suppose?'

'Absolutely.'

'Well, it is a remarkable series of events; a--most remarkable series,'
Dr. Addington answered with professional gravity. 'And certainly, if the
lady is all you paint her--and she seems to set you young bloods on
fire--no ending could well be more satisfactory. With the addition of a
comfortable place in the Stamps or the Pipe Office, if we can take his
lordship the right way--it should do. It should do handsomely. But',
with a keen glance at his companion, 'even without that--you know that
he is still far from well?'

'I know that all the world is of one of two opinions,' Sir George
answered, smiling. 'The first, that his lordship ails nothing save
politically; the other, that he is at death's door and will not have
it known.'

The physician shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. 'Neither is true,'
he said. 'The simple fact is, he has the gout; and the gout is an odd
thing, Sir George, as you'll know on