“Fie! Fie! Sir Robin! Are we highwaymen? tricksters? Honor us by using our sovereigns as they were your own, eh, Sir Percy, have we not the right of the matter?” asked Jack Chalmers, turning to the tall young man, who, having crossed the room again, now stood leaning moodily against the chimney-piece, frowning, tapping hearth with heel in too evident impatience of the subject of discussion. “I humbly ask your pardon, Mr. Chalmers,” he replies, “both for differing with you all, and for expressing the same. To my way of thinking”—adds Sir Percy, with deliberation, ill-matched by the flash of his eyes as they take a scornful measure of the supposed Sir Robin—“to my way of thinking, any gentleman who carries his company into any other gentleman’s chambers without the means of a paltry game of loo or écarté in ’s pocket’s not quite such a proper young man ’s he might be!” And with this, Sir Percy laid his hand upon his sword hilt, and Kennaston laid his upon that, attempting to stay the torrent. “Tut! tut!” cried this one and that. “His Lordship’s dead drunk with Cupid, Sir Robin, mind him not,” whispers another. “De Bohun breaks a joke,” exclaims a third, all at once. And in the same moment, also, upsprings my Lady Peggy, hand on hilt too, and says she loudly, same time as the rest: “A pox on ye for a libeler! Sir Percy de Bohun, mayhap it’s the errand Your Lordship’s up in town a-pursuing hath turned Your Lordship’s brain?” Here Lady Peggy laughs in derision and stands full height updrawn upon her girl’s red heels. “Curse me! but you are impertinent, Sir,” responds Percy, taking a step forward, his anger rising as he beholds his purpose galloping to the goal of its quick fulfilment. “What then, an it please you, is my ‘errand up in town?’ since you are thus familiar with my gaits; tell ’em off, Sir Robin McTart, I give ye leave!” “With your leave, or without it,” cries Peggy in a voice that causes Chockey to lift the loft-cover an inch higher, and so, kneeling with nose flattened against floor, to behold her mistress’s fine and splendid show of valor. “I’d have you hear, Sir, that to persons of fashion the matter of your suit near Lady Diana Weston’s a jeer and jest of the first flavour,—for ’twere easy seen a lady of her quality, Sir, ’d not be a-wasting her time on you.” “Damme! Sir!” cries Sir Percy, now thoroughly aroused and far more in earnest than ever he was at the beginning. “You lie! Aye, My Lords, Sirs, and Gentlemen! Nay, ye can not stop my mouth,” unsheathing his rapier; Peggy does likewise, each pushing and warding from them the restraining hands and words of their associates. “A foul lie! My errand up in town, Sir Robin McTart, is to try to drown my sorrows as I may, because the only lady that ever I loved set me the pace to the devil by a-refusing of my suit come Easter-day, three months to an hour ago.”