'In the Lunette St. Laurent, monsieur?' 'Very good.' 'Swords or pistols, monsieur?' 'Oh, the devil--pistols, of course,' replied Cadbury, as if he was in the habit of fighting a duel every morning. 'Merci, monsieur, we shall not fail you, and now good evening--bon soir.' 'Bon soir.' The manner of Captain Gabion, who had been eyeing him with some contempt, twirling his moustache the while, changed completely now, and, bowing with studious politeness, he withdrew to report progress to Bevil Goring. CHAPTER XXII. IN THE LUNETTE ST. LAURENT. At first a kind of--shall we say it?--savage joy and exultation swelled up in the breast of Goring at the prospect of being face to face with Cadbury again, and already in fancy he was covering with his pistol the spectrum of the peer's thick-set, pudgy person, for he had at first serious doubts--though they were both on the Continent--that the latter would accept his challenge. 'Well, I have faced much in my short time, and figured in many things; but I never thought to do so in such an old-fashioned affair as a duel!' he said, with a grim smile, to his new friend Gabion. And he wondered what Tony Dalton, Jerry Wilmot, and others of the battalion now far away beyond the equator, would think of the event, when tidings would reach them that he had been shot by Lord Cadbury, or had shot the latter--and in a duel! How strange it sounded to English ears now! He wrote to his solicitors to settle a sum stated--a handsome annuity on Alison, if she was found--one that would keep her every way independent alike of her father and Lord Cadbury, if he fell by the hand of the latter--instructions which made those quiet and very acute legal practitioners, Messrs. Taype, Shawrpe, and Scrawly, open their eyes very wide indeed, when the letter reached them at Gray's Inn Square. His reveries were not very rose-coloured, as he might be a dead man long before _this_ time to-morrow, he thought, while looking at the clock; however, it did not impair his appetite, and he and Victor Gabion spent the evening at the Café Grisor, in the Rue Von Shoonhoven, listening to the grand organ which is played by machinery, while enjoying their wine and cigars, far into the small hours of the morning. Yet we may be sure that there are few men, if they told truth, but would acknowledge that they felt a very unpleasant emotion when thinking that when another round of the clock was achieved their part in this world might be over--ended and done with! In the morning he was in a brighter mood, and, though infuriated against Cadbury, had no desire to kill, but only to wound him, to the end that he might wring from him the secret of what he had done with Alison. He was a good marksman--had been a musketry instructor--and with rifle and revolver had done some great things among the big game and hill tribes in India.