His intention, I believe, was to provoke me, and he succeeded. "Mr. Osbaldistone," I said, "this tone of calm insolence shall not avail you. You ought to be aware that the name we both bear never submitted to insult, and shall not in my person be exposed to it." "You remind me," said Rashleigh, with one of his blackest looks, "that it was dishonoured in my person!--and you remind me also by whom! Do you think I have forgotten the evening at Osbaldistone Hall when you cheaply and with impunity played the bully at my expense? For that insult--never to be washed out but by blood!--for the various times you have crossed my path, and always to my prejudice--for the persevering folly with which you seek to traverse schemes, the importance of which you neither know nor are capable of estimating,--for all these, sir, you owe me a long account, for which there shall come an early day of reckoning." "Let it come when it will," I replied, "I shall be willing and ready to meet it. Yet you seem to have forgotten the heaviest article--that I had the pleasure to aid Miss Vernon's good sense and virtuous feeling in extricating her from your infamous toils." I think his dark eyes flashed actual fire at this home-taunt, and yet his voice retained the same calm expressive tone with which he had hitherto conducted the conversation. "I had other views with respect to you, young man," was his answer: "less hazardous for you, and more suitable to my present character and former education. But I see you will draw on yourself the personal chastisement your boyish insolence so well merits. Follow me to a more remote spot, where we are less likely to be interrupted."