Once during that two days there had been a collision between the lawyer and the V. A. D. C., not one word of which, probably, had reached the ears of the lady in whose behalf it had occurred, from the lips of the politic Captain, or from any of those who saw and heard it,--as it certainly had not been hinted to her by the other party in the rencontre. That collision had happened in this wise. On the afternoon of the same day on which the very pleasant interview with Margaret Hayley took place in the parlor of the Crawford, Horace Townsend strolled into the billiard-saloon. Since the night before, in one particular direction, he had been decidedly ill-tempered, not to say ferocious; and however he might have been softened for the moment by the encounter of the morning, in one respect that encounter had left him much more likely to assault the man who had calumniated him so foully, than he could have been before a certain assurance had been given him on that occasion. Then the officer's stare into his face, when leaving the room, had not tended to remove any of his bile; he did not believe, it is probable, that he would stand any the worse with the peculiarly constituted Margaret Hayley, in the event of an insult to the man who had insulted _him_ coming to her knowledge; and in short he had been all day prepared, at any time when he could do so with most effect, to repay him, interest included, in his own coin of ill-treatment. How soon or how effectually his opportunity was coming--_the_ opportunity of all others for a stab in a vital part,--he had no idea when he entered the billiard-room.