as touched each other.
A straightening of the arm on the part of Mr. Caryll, and the engagement
would have been at an end.

Mr. Caryll, however, did not straighten his arm. He was observed to
smile as he broke ground and waited for his lordship to recover.

Falgate turned pale. Mainwaring swore softly under his breath, in fear
for his principal; Gascoigne did the same in vexation at the opportunity
Mr. Caryll had so wantonly wasted. Wharton looked on with tight-pressed
lips, and wondered.

Rotherby recovered, and for a moment the two men stood apart, seeming
to feel each other with their eyes before resuming. Then his lordship
renewed the attack with vigor.

Mr. Caryll parried lightly and closely, plying a beautiful weapon in the
best manner of the French school, and opposing to the ponderous force
of his antagonist a delicate frustrating science. Rotherby, a fine
swordsman in his way, soon saw that here was need for all his skill, and
he exerted it. But the prodigious rapidity of his blade broke as upon a
cuirass against the other's light, impenetrable guard.

His lordship broke ground, breathed heavily, and sweated under the glare
of the morning sun, cursing this swordsman who, so cool and deliberate,
husbanded his strength and scarcely seemed to move, yet by sheer skill
and address more than neutralized his lordship's advantages of greater
strength and length of reach.

"You cursed French dog!" swore the viscount presently, between his
teeth, and as he spoke he made a ringing parade, feinted, beat the
ground with his foot to draw off the other's attention, and went in
again with a full-length lunge. "Parry that, you damned maitre-d'armes"
he roared.

Mr. Caryll answered nothing; he parried; parried again; delivered a
riposte whenever the opportunity offered, or whenever his lordship grew
too pressing, and it became expedient to drive him back; but never once
did he stretch out to lunge in his turn. The seconds were so lost in
wonder at the beauty of this close play of his that they paid no heed to
what was taking place in the square about them. They never observed the
opening windows and the spectators gathering at them--as Wharton had
feared. Amongst these, had either of the combatants looked up, he would
have seen his own father on the balcony of Stretton House. A moment the
earl stood there, Lady Ostermore at his side; then he vanished into the
house again, to reappear almost at once in the street, with a