you see that
this was only a drunken frolic, that these young fellows did not want to
insult you, and if I stayed here behind them, it was to appease, not to
offend you?"

"Dinna speak to me, sir. Let me go,--let go my coat I 'm not to be
handled in this manner," cried the other, in passion.

"Go back to your bed, then!" said Tony, pushing him from him. "It's
clear enough you have no gentleman's blood in your body, or you 'd
accept an amends or resent an affront."

Stung by this retort, the other turned and aimed a blow at Butler's
face; but he stopped it cleverly, and then, seizing him by the shoulder,
he swung him violently round, and threw him within the gate of the
garden.

"You are more angered than hurt," muttered Tony, as he looked at him for
an instant.

"Oh, Tony, that this could be you!" cried a faint voice from a little
window of an attic, and a violent sob closed the words.

Tony turned and went his way towards London, those accents ringing in
his ears, and at every step he went repeating, "That this could be you!"

CHAPTER XV. A STRANGE MEETING AND PARTING

What a dreary waking was that of Tony's on the morning after the orgies!
Not a whit the less overwhelming from the great difficulty he had in
recalling the events, and investigating his own share in them. There was
nothing that he could look back upon with pleasure. Of the dinner
and the guests, all that he could remember was the costliness and the
tumult; and of the scene at Mrs. M'Grader's, his impression was of
insults given and received, a violent altercation, in which his own
share could not be defended.

How different had been his waking thoughts, had he gone as he proposed,
to bid Dora a good-bye, and tell her of his great good fortune! How full
would his memory now have been of her kind words and wishes; how much
would he have to recall of her sisterly affection, for they had been
like brother and sister from their childhood! It was to Dora that Tony
confided all his boyhood's sorrows, and to the same ear he had told his
first talc of love, when the beautiful Alice Lyle had sent through his
heart those emotions which, whether of ecstasy or torture, make a new
existence and a new being to him who feels them for the first time.
He had loved Alice as a girl, and was all but heart-broken when she
married. His sorrows--and were they not sorrows?--had all been intrusted
to Dora; and from her he had heard such wise and kind counsels, suc