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 hurriedly. "The Count has only expressed a desire not to play any longer, and, of course, in my house I should not think of urging him;" and he glanced at the rest, as if asking them to interfere.

"Our host's views are my answer to you," I said.

But the Duke was bent on the quarrel.

"A very discreet shield," he sneered, and then his passion broke out. "What I said I maintain," he continued furiously. "You have tried deliberately to break up the party with your infernally domineering interference. I have had far too much of your interference, not only here but elsewhere. I'll have no more of it. Who are you, to come thrusting yourself into concerns that are nothing to you? If you don't like our company, leave it; and if you don't like the country, leave that too. And the sooner the better. This is no garbage-heap for either renegade Roumanians or cowardly English to be carted here;" and he laughed in my face.

My blood boiled at his words, but I meant the quarrel to go even farther yet, and after a pause of dead silence I answered, clipping my words short:

"Rather a hunting-ground where a fortune may be picked up by any drunken, bankrupt Russian duke, infamous enough to stoop to any cowardly baseness."

He could scarce restrain himself to hear me out before he flung himself at me in wild, desperate rage.

I caught his arm in my left hand as it was raised, and flinging out my right with all my strength I struck him a violent blow on the mouth and knocked him down.

In another moment the men had thrown themselves between us, holding him as he struggled to his feet