tes before.

Soane did not know whether the attorney had preceded him or followed
him: the intrusion was the same, and flushed with annoyance, he strode
to him to mark his sense of it. But Peter, being addressed, wore his
sharpest business air, and was entirely unconscious of offence. 'I have
merely purveyed a surgeon,' he said, indicating a young man who stood
beside him. 'I could not learn that you had provided one, sir.'

'Oh!' Sir George answered, somewhat taken aback, 'this is the
gentleman.'

'Yes, sir.'

Soane was in the act of saluting the stranger, when a party of two or
three persons came up behind, and had much ado not to jostle them in the
gateway. It consisted of Mr. Dunborough, Lord Almeric, and two other
gentlemen; one of these, an elderly man, who wore black and hair-powder,
and carried a gold-topped cane, had a smug and well-pleased expression,
that indicated his stake in the meeting to be purely altruistic. The two
companies exchanged salutes.

On this followed a little struggle to give precedence at the gate, but
eventually all went through. 'If we turn to the right,' some one
observed, 'there is a convenient place. No, this way, my lord.'

'Oh Lord, I have such a head this morning!' his lordship answered; and
he looked by no means happy. 'I am all of a twitter! It is so confounded
early, too. See here: cannot this be--?'

The gentleman who had spoken before drowned his voice. 'Will this do,
sir?' he said, raising his hat, and addressing Sir George. The party had
reached a smooth glade or lawn encompassed by thick shrubs, and to all
appearance a hundred miles from a street. A fairy-ring of verdure,
glittering with sunlight and dewdrops, and tuneful with the songs of
birds, it seemed a morsel of paradise dropped from the cool blue of
heaven. Sir George felt a momentary tightening of the throat as he
surveyed its pure brilliance, and then a sudden growing anger against
the fool who had brought him thither.

'You have no second?' said the stranger.

'No,' he answered curtly; 'I think we have witnesses enough.'

'Still--if the matter can be accommodated?'

'It can,' Soane answered, standing stiffly before them. 'But only by an
unreserved apology on Mr. Dunborough's part. He struck me. I have no
more to say.'

'I do not offer the apology,' Mr. Dunborough rejoined, with a
horse-laugh. 'So we may as well go on, Jerry. I did not come here
to talk.'

'I have brought pistols,' his second said,