"I wish you would," answered the Earl; "it would all turn to my account." "Do you defy me?--Well, if I meet him, I will put him on his guard." The friends parted; and it was not long ere Jekyl encountered Mowbray on one of the public walks. "You dine with Etherington to-day?" said the Captain--"Forgive me, Mr. Mowbray, if I say one single word--Beware." "Of what should I beware, Captain Jekyl," answered Mowbray, "when I dine with a friend of your own, and a man of honour?" "Certainly Lord Etherington is both, Mr. Mowbray; but he loves play, and is too hard for most people." "I thank you for your hint, Captain Jekyl--I am a raw Scotchman, it is true; but yet I know a thing or two. Fair play is always presumed amongst gentlemen; and that taken for granted, I have the vanity to think I need no one's caution on the subject, not even Captain Jekyl's, though his experience must needs be so much superior to mine." "In that case, sir," said Jekyl, bowing coldly, "I have no more to say, and I hope there is no harm done.--Conceited coxcomb!" he added, mentally, as they parted, "how truly did Etherington judge of him, and what an ass was I to intermeddle!--I hope Etherington will strip him of every feather!" He pursued his walk in quest of Tyrrel, and Mowbray proceeded to the apartments of the Earl, in a temper of mind well suited to the purposes of the latter, who judged of his disposition accurately when he permitted Jekyl to give his well-meant warning. To be supposed, by a man of acknowledged fashion, so decidedly inferior to his antagonist--to be considered as an object of compassion, and made the subject of a good-boy warning, was gall and bitterness to his proud spirit, which, the more that he felt a conscious inferiority in the arts which they all cultivated, struggled the more to preserve the footing of at least apparent equality.