As I was descending the stairs a flunky in the livery of the Westerleighs handed me a note. It was from Antoinette, and in a line requested me to meet her at once in the summer-house of the garden. In days past I had coquetted many an hour away with her. Indeed, years before we had been lovers in half-earnest boy and girl fashion, and after that the best of friends. Grimly I resolved to keep the appointment and to tell this little worldling some things she needed much to know. I found her waiting. Her back was turned, and though she must have heard me coming she gave no sign. I was still angry at her for her share in what had just happened and I waited coldly for her to begin. She joined me in the eloquent silence of a Quaker meeting. "Well, I am here," I said at last. "Oh, it's you." She turned on me, mighty cold and haughty. "Sir, I take it as a great presumption that you dare to stay at the same inn with me after attempting to murder my husband that is to be." "Murder!" I gasped, giving ground in dismay at this unexpected charge. "Murder was the word I used, sir. Do you not like it?" "'Twas a fair fight," I muttered. "Was it not you that challenged? Did you not force it on him?" "Yes, but----" "And then you dare to come philandering here after me. Do you think I can change lovers as often as gloves, sir? Or as often as you?" "Madam, I protest----" "La! You protest! Did you not come here to see me? Answer me that, sir!" With an angry stamp of her foot. "Yes, Mistress Westerleigh, your note----" "And to philander? Do you deny it?" "Deny it. Odzooks, yes! 'Tis the last thing I have in my mind," I rapped out mighty short. "I have done with women and their follies. I begin to see why men of sense prefer to keep their freedom." "Do you, Kenn? And was the other lady so hard on you? Did she make you pay for our follies? Poor Kenn!" laughed my mocking tormentor with so sudden a change of front that I was quite nonplussed. "And did you think I did not know my rakehelly lover Sir Robert better than to blame you for his quarrels?" I breathed freer. She had taken the wind out of my sails, for I had come purposing to give her a large piece of my mind. Divining my intention, womanlike she had created a diversion by carrying the war into the country of the enemy. She looked winsome in the extreme. Little dimples ran in and out her peach-bloom cheeks. In her eyes danced a kind of innocent devilry, and the alluring mouth was the sweetest Cupid's bow imaginable. Laughter rippled over her face like the wind in golden grain. Mayhap my eyes told what I was thinking, for she asked in a pretty, audacious imitation of the Scotch dialect Aileen was supposed to speak, "Am I no' bonny, Kenneth?" "You are that, 'Toinette." "But you love her better?" she said softly. I told her yes. "And yet----" She turned and began to pull a honeysuckle to pieces, pouting in the prettiest fashion conceivable.