he has the thing he cried for, spoilt boy as he was from his
birth. I tell you truth, m' Aminta, I grieve to lose him. What with his
airs of the foreign-tinted, punctilious courtly gentleman covering a
survival of the ancient British forest boar or bear, he was a picture in
our modern set, and piquant. And he was devoted to our sex, we must
admit, after the style of the bears. They are for honey, and they have a
hug. If he hadn't been so much of a madman, I should have liked him for
his courage. He had plenty of that, nothing to steer it. A second cousin
comes in for his estates.'

'He is dead?' Aminta cried.

'Yes, dear, he is gone. What the women think of it I can't say. The
general feeling among the men is that some one of them would have had to
send him sooner or later. The curious point, Adder says, is his letting
it be done by steel. He was a dead shot, dangerous with the small sword,
as your Mr. Weyburn said, only soon off his head. But I used to be
anxious about the earl's meeting him with pistols. He did his best to
provoke it. Here, Adder,'--she spoke over her shoulder,--'tell Lady
Ormont all you know of the Morsfield-May affair.'

Lord Adderwood bowed compliance. His coolness was the masculine of Mrs.
Lawrence's hardly feminine in treating of a terrible matter, so that the
dull red facts had to be disengaged from his manner of speech before they
sank into Aminta's acceptance; of them as credible.

'They fought with foils, buttons off, preliminary ceremonies perfect;
salute in due order; guard, and at it.

Odd thing was, nobody at Chiallo's had a notion of the business till
Morsfield was pinked. He wouldn't be denied; went to work like a fellow
meaning to be skewered, if he couldn't do the trick: and he tried it. May
had been practising some weeks. He's well on the Continent by this time.
It'll blow over. Button off sheer accident. I wasn't lucky enough to see
the encounter: came in just when Chiallo was lashing his poll over
Morsfield flat on the ground. He had it up to the hilt. We put a buttoned
foil by the side of Morsfield, and all swore to secrecy. As it is, it 'll
go badly against poor Chiallo. Taste for fencing won't be much improved
by the affair. They quarrelled in the dressing room, and fetched the
foils and knocked off the buttons there. A big rascal toady squire of
Morsfield's did it for him. Morsfield was just up from Yorkshire. He said
he was expecting a summons elsewhere, bound to await it