“Aye, I dare,” said the stranger viciously; and he turned his face, in a white fume, to regard the flight of the fugitive. “Go your way,” said he between his teeth, as if addressing the receding figure. “You are marked down at last, my lady, and will be called on in due time to pay the reckoning. And as for you, you villain”--he whisked like a devil on his prisoner--“you have got to answer for this here and now.” He had to, somehow. His Highness, with that acute perception of his, saw the necessity, and ceased to strive. He was fairly trapped, and very certainly by the injured husband himself. He had nothing for it but to bring all his finesse to the solution of so embarrassing a problem. “Sir,” said he, with a good deal of haughtiness, “will you please to quit this rude grasp on me? You need not fear. I am a man of honour.” “O, of honour!” said Chesterfield, with a sneer. But he released his hold. “You surprise me, on my word. But, being so, perhaps you will inform me, man of honour, where you would like to come with me to have your throat cut.” “We will discuss the necessity of that,” said the Duke civilly, “when I know your name.” “So particular?” mocked the other. “But will it not inform you sufficiently to be told that I am the husband of the lady you have just parted with?” “Indeed, it informs me nothing,” replied the Duke most suavely. “What! you dare to pretend to me that you know her not?” “Sir,” said the Duke, “I would disdain to answer to your insolence were it not that there must be something in appearances which, it seems, justifies it in you. I cannot presume your name from that of the lady who has just vanished, because I do not know her.” “You are lying to me, I know.” “You deserve no explanation; which I vouchsafe, nevertheless, solely for her good credit’s sake. I admit I accosted the lady in question; but it was under a misapprehension, being misled by a certain token she wore in her dress, and for which I had been directed to look. My importunities are explained by my reluctance to believe that a coincidence so remarkable as the wearing of that same token by another was even conceivable.” Truly a plausible defence; but there is a craft, as well as a credulity, in jealousy, and Chesterfield showed it. “Well, sir,” said he, “I will take your word for’t on a condition; and that is that you return me your name for my own. I am the Earl of Chesterfield.” “And I,” said the Duke, “prefer to be known to you for the moment as ‘Kit’--simply ‘Kit,’ at your service.” It was no sooner spoken than he realized his blunder. It would be this very anonymity, the presumptive second party to the liaison, whom the husband, being here, would be in search of. Chesterfield, in fact, showed his instant sense of the admission. He let out a laugh that was wholly diabolical. “Ha-ha!” cried he. “Damned and condemned, thou dog, out of thine own mouth!”