In an instant, Sir Richard was upon the lawn without, face to face with his insulter. No one in the ball-room, save the two gentlemen who had been conversing together, had overheard the exclamation, and his Lordship had not caught it distinctly. The band was playing on, as accurately as before, and the dancers were dancing in tune; the cavaliers were whispering their soft nothings, and the ladies making their sweet replies, while the two men without--the one so scrupulously apparelled in the latest fashion, the other dishevelled, travel-stained, and in all respects what we call “a Rough,” but both as brave as lions--were grappling one another by their throats. Sir Richard, who never forgot any man's face--a faculty not uncommon with persons of his class and character--had recognised Ralph Derrick, the turbulent interloper in his parish, the evil counsellor of his brother, at the first glance; and enraged at his audacious trespass at such a time, quite as much as by his late brutal insult to himself, which he set down as the result of drink, he threw himself upon the gold-digger with the utmost fury. The Earl of Marrobone stepped outside also, and closed behind him the ball-room window; the stout old nobleman was one of the coolest hands in England, and never lost his presence of mind. Even thus debarred from making that public exposure of the young baronet which Derrick had promised himself, he might have said something which his Lordship would not have forgotten--for he was one of those who had seen too much of the world to believe anything untrue merely because it seemed impossible--but that, at the first touch of Sir Richard's fingers, Ralph's fury deprived him of all utterance except a few desperate imprecations. He would have liked, with folded arms, to have impeached the young baronet as a base-born impostor (for he felt convinced that the reason for my Lady's flight was known to him and the rest of the family), and have stated his own wrongs in a few earnest and pregnant words before the whole company in yonder room; but now that he had his enemy so close, “the blind wild beast of force within him, whose home is in the sinews of a man,” was driven to strike and strike again. So the precious half-minute that elapsed before help came to Sir Richard, was wasted, and Derrick found himself helpless, and with his wrongs untold, in the clutch of half-a-dozen men, and one of them the village policeman, whom Steve had found at last, and despatched for that very purpose.