I had this information in guarded whispers from mine host of the tavern, and was but a moment free of the tap-room, when I first saw Margery Stair and so drank of the cup of trembling with madness in its lees. She was riding, unmasked, down the high road, not on a pillion as most women rode in that day, but upon her own mount with a black groom two lengths in the rear. I can picture her for you no better than I could for Richard Jennifer; but this I know, that even this first sight of her moved me strangely, though the witching beauty of her face and the proudness of it were more a challenge than a beckoning. A blade's length at my right where I was standing in front of the tavern, three redcoat officers lounged at ease; and to one of them my lady tossed a nod of recognition, half laughing, half defiant. I turned quickly to look at the favored one. He stood with his back to me; a man of about my own bigness, heavy-built and well-muscled. He wore a bob-wig, as did many of the troop officers, but his uniform was tailor-fine, and the hand with which he was resettling his hat was bejeweled--overmuch bejeweled, to my taste. Something half familiar in the figure of him made me look again. In the act he turned, and then I saw his face--saw and recognized it though nine years lay between this and my last seeing of it across the body of Richard Coverdale. "So!" thought I. "My time has come at last." And while I was yet turning over in my mind how best to bait him, the lady passed out of earshot, and I heard him say to the two, his comrades, that foul thing which I would not repeat to Jennifer; a vile boast with which I may not soil my page here for you. "Oh, come, Sir Frank! that's too bad!" cried the younger of the twain; and then I took two strides to front him fairly. "Sir Francis Falconnet, you are a foul-lipped blackguard!" I said; and, lest that should not be enough, I smote him in the face so that he fell like an ox in the shambles. III IN WHICH MY ENEMY SCORES FIRST True to his promise, Richard Jennifer met me in the cool gray birthlight of the new day at a turn in the river road not above a mile or two from the rendezvous, and thence we jogged on together. After the greetings, which, as you may like to know, were grateful enough on my part, I would fain inquire how the baronet had taken his second's defection; but of this Jennifer would say little. He had broken with his principal, whether in anger or not I could only guess; and one of Falconnet's brother officers, that younger of the twain who had cried shame at the baronet's vile boast, was to serve in his stead.