She whisked herself free of him, and, darting to the other side of the room, whipped down a thin rapier from the wall. “You will be well advised to put an end to this fooling. I am now in no humour for it, and with you, never. If you have not the gift to see it, I would have you know that I detest you and despise you, and have done so since first I saw you.” “Ah, my little lady Termagant, you say as much now; but when the world knows you paid a thousand pounds for a lover there will be many envious persons who wish to be despised as much.” “You ruffian and thief! Well did Vollins estimate your honesty. But stand aside from that door, or your stealing will profit you little.” “Indeed!” cried De Courcy with a laugh, as he possessed himself of a similar weapon to that which threatened him. “’T is already squandered, and I am in sore need of a further instalment. Are you for a duel, then?” “If you are coward enough to lift blade to a woman.” “I meet kiss with kiss, and steel with steel; always ready for either. Guard yourself, Madam.” His pretended antagonism was but a feint to throw her off the guard he advised her to maintain, for, being one of the best swordsmen of his time, he knew by her holding of the blade that she was ignorant of its practice. He brushed her sword aside, dropped his own, and sprang in upon her, grasping again her helpless wrists, her arms pinioned thus transversely across her body, her right hand still clinging to the useless hilt, with the blade extending past her shoulder and behind her. His sneering, grinning face so close to hers that his breath fanned her cheek, he pressed her back and back against the wall, the sword bending and bending behind her until the blade snapped off some six inches from the hilt and fell ringing to the floor. “There, sweetest of Amazons, you are stingless now, and naught but the honey is to be gathered.” The very ease with which he had overcome her hoodwinked him to his danger. The proud dominant blood of the Wentworths flushed her face with an anger that steeled every nerve in her lithe body. As, with a victorious laugh, he released her wrists and slipped his arms around her, she struck him twice with lightning swiftness, first across the brow, then down the face. Nothing could well be more terrible than the weapon she had used, for the jagged iron tore his flesh like the stroke of a tiger’s claw. The red cross showed for a brief moment, then was obliterated in a crimson flood. “Cowardly poltroon, wear the brand of Cain!”