or my Lord Rotherby when the story should
be told.

"You damned rogue--" began his lordship, and would have flung himself
upon Caryll, but that Collis and Stapleton, and Wharton himself, put
forth hands to stay him by main force.

Others, too, had risen. But Mr. Caryll sat quietly in his chair, idly
fingering the cards before him, and smiling gently, between amusement
and irony. He was much mistaken if he did not make Lord Rotherby
bitterly regret the initiative he had taken in their quarrel.

"Gently, my lord," the duke admonished the viscount. "This--this
gentleman has said that which touches your honor. He shall say more.
He shall make good his words, or eat them. But the matter cannot rest
thus."

"It shall not, by God!" swore Rotherby, purple now. "It shall not. I'll
kill him like a dog for what he has said."

"But before I die, gentlemen," said Mr. Caryll, "it were well that you
should have the full story of that sorry adventure from an eye-witness."

"An eye-witness? Were ye present?" cried two or three in a breath.

"I desire to lay before you all the story of how we met my lord there
and I. It is so closely enmeshed with the story of that abduction
and mock-marriage that the one is scarce to be distinguished from the
other."

Rotherby writhed to shake off those who held him.

"Will ye listen to this fellow?" he roared. "He's a spy, I tell you--a
Jacobite spy!" He was beside himself with anger and apprehension, and he
never paused to weigh the words he uttered. It was with him a question
of stopping his accuser's mouth with whatever mud came under his hands.
"He has no right here. It is not to be borne. I know not by what means
he has thrust himself among you, but--"

"That is a knowledge I can afford your lordship," came Stapleton's
steady voice to interrupt the speaker. "Mr. Caryll is here by my
invitation."

"And by mine and Gascoigne's here," added Sir Harry Collis, "and I will
answer for his quality to any man who doubts it."

Rotherby glared at Mr. Caryll's sponsors, struck dumb by this sudden and
unexpected refutation of the charge he had leveled.

Wharton, who had stepped aside, knit his brows and flashed his
quizzing-glass--through sheer force of habit--upon Lord Rotherby. Then:

"You'll pardon me, Harry," said he, "but you'll see, I hope, that
the question is not impertinent; that I put it to the end that we may
clearly know with whom we have to deal and what consideration to
extend h