Page:A Gentleman's Gentleman.djvu/122



"What can she say, when it's for her that I'm meeting him? Wasn't it he who prevented her coming last night? Wasn't he the man who stopped her when she was to meet me at the Café de Paris? The devil take your apologies!"

"Then I'm to call on him?"

"Certainly ye are, and to have Rudolphe Marcel with you. There's no other that I know who would do it for me."

"He has the right of weapons," said Mr. Ames here.

"And don't I know it? What's it to me whether he's the right of weapons? Won't I kill him any way?"

Mr. Ames shook his head, and the two went off, walking arm and arm, to the house of Rudolphe Marcel. I saw them next at seven o'clock, when they were all dining at the Café Rouge, but Sir Nicolas never came home until midnight, and then he was more like a beaten child than a man.

"Hildebrand, Hildebrand," said he, "ye'll be burying me to-morrow, for sure. I'm to fight at dawn."

"Is that so, sir?" said I. "Well, sorry I am to hear it. There was never any good done yet in this world by blowing a man's brains out, and there won't be, I make sure. I wouldn't fight, if I were you, sir."

"Wouldn't fight—hark at him!" cried he. "Wouldn't fight—me that is the ninth baronet with forefathers big in history! Is it the chicken of the