Cecil checked him, ejaculating, “Thank you, Dr. Shrapnel; I thank you most cordially,” with a shining smile. “Stay, sir! no more. I take my leave of you. Not another word. No ‘buts’! I recognize that conciliation is out of the question: you are the natural protector of poachers, and you will not grant me an interview with the young lady you call your ward, that I may represent to her, as a person we presume to have a chance of moving you, how easily—I am determined you shall hear me, Dr. Shrapnel!—how easily the position of Captain Beauchamp may become precarious with his uncle Mr. Romfrey. And let me add—‘but’ and ‘but’ me till Doomsday, sir!—if you were—I _do_ hear you, sir, and you shall hear me—if you were a younger man, I say, I would hold you answerable to me for your scandalous and disgraceful insinuations.” Dr. Shrapnel was adroitly fenced and over-shouted. He shrugged, stuttered, swayed, wagged a bulrush-head, flapped his elbows, puffed like a swimmer in the breakers, tried many times to expostulate, and finding the effort useless, for his adversary was copious and commanding, relapsed, eyeing him as an object far removed. Cecil rounded one of his perplexingly empty sentences and turned on his heel. “War, then!” he said. “As you like,” retorted the doctor. “Oh! Very good. Good evening.” Cecil slightly lifted his hat, with the short projection of the head of the stately peacock in its walk, and passed out of the garden. Lord Palmet, deeply disappointed and mystified, went after him, leaving Dr. Shrapnel to shorten his garden walk with enormous long strides. “I’m afraid you didn’t manage the old boy,” Palmet complained. “They’re people who have tea in their gardens; we might have sat down with them and talked, the best friends in the world, and come again to-morrow might have called her Jenny in a week. She didn’t show her pretty nose at any of the windows.” His companion pooh-poohed and said: “Foh! I’m afraid I permitted myself to lose my self-command for a moment.” Palmet sang out an amorous couplet to console himself. Captain Baskelett respected the poetic art for its magical power over woman’s virtue, but he disliked hearing verses, and they were ill-suited to Palmet. He abused his friend roundly, telling him it was contemptible to be quoting verses. He was irritable still. He declared himself nevertheless much refreshed by his visit to Dr. Shrapnel. “We shall have to sleep tonight in this unhallowed town, but I needn’t be off to Holdesbury in the morning; I’ve done my business. I shall write to the baron to-night, and we can cross the water to-morrow in time for operations.” The letter to Mr. Romfrey was composed before midnight. It was a long one, and when he had finished it, Cecil remembered that the act of composition had been assisted by a cigar in his mouth, and Mr. Romfrey detested the smell of tobacco. There was nothing to be done but to write the letter over again, somewhat more briefly: it ran thus: