f her
garments, while her husband shrieked curses at them from the tree where
he was tied)--and on that occasion he had told himself 'twould be safer
to trifle with a mine of powder than with this man's anger. He rose
hurriedly and followed him outside. In the street he could scarce keep
pace with his great stride, and the curses that broke from him brought
back hot days of battle.

"I would not enter into a pot-house brawl with a braggart boy," he
cried. "The blackguard, dastard knave! Drag me away, Hal, lest I rush
back like a fool and run him through! I have lost my wits. 'Tis the
fashion for dandies to pour forth their bestial braggings, but never
hath a man made my blood so boil and me so mad to strike him."

"'Tis not like thee so to lose thy wits, Roxholm," Warbeck said, his
hand on his arm, "but thou hast lost them this once surely. 'Tis no
work for the sword of a gentleman pinking foul-mouthed boasters in a
coffee-house. Know you who he is?"

"Damnation, _No!_" thundered Roxholm, striding on more fiercely still.

"'Tis the new dandy, Sir John Oxon," said Warbeck. "And the beauty he
makes his boast on is the Gloucestershire Wildairs handsome madcap--the
one they call Mistress Clo."

_CHAPTER X_

_My Lord Marquess rides to Camylott_.

When he went home my lord sate late over his books before he went to
his chamber, yet he read but little, finding his mood disturbed by
thoughts which passed through it in his despite. His blood had grown
hot at the coffee-house, and though 'twas by no means the first time it
had heated when he heard the heartless and coarse talk of woman which
it was the habit of most men of the day to indulge in, he realised that
it had never so boiled as when he listened to the brutal and
significant swagger of Sir John Oxon. His youth and beauty and cruel,
confident air had made it seem devilish in its suggestion of what his
past almost boyish years might have held of pitiless pleasures and
pitiless indifference to the consequences, which, while they were added
triumphs to him, were ruin and despair to their victims.

"The laugh in his blue eye was damnable," Roxholm murmured. "'Twas as
if there was no help for her or any other poor creature whom he chose
to pursue. The base unfairness of it! He is equipped with the whole
armament--of lures, of lies, of knowledge, and devilish skill. There
are women, 'tis true, who are his equals; but those who are not--those
who are ignorant a