“And who shall blame Lady O’Moy?” Count Samoval pursued. “A lady so charming and so courted must seek her consolation for the almost unnatural union Fate has imposed upon her. Captain Tremayne is of her own age, convenient to her hand, and for an Englishman not ill-looking.” He smiled at O’Moy with insolent compassion, and O’Moy, losing all his self-control, struck him slapped him resoundingly upon the cheek. “Ye’re a dirty liar, Samoval, a muck-rake,” said he. Samoval stepped back, breathing hard, one cheek red, the other white. Yet by a miracle he still preserved his self-control. “I have proved my courage too often,” he said, “to be under the necessity of killing you for this blow. Since my honour is safe I will not take advantage of your overwrought condition.” “Ye’ll take advantage of it whether ye like it or not,” blazed Sir Terence at him. “I mean you to take advantage of it. D’ ye think I’ll suffer any man to cast a slur upon Lady O’Moy? I’ll be sending my friends to wait on you to-day, Count; and--by God!--Tremayne himself shall be one of them.” Thus did the hot-headed fellow deliver himself into the hands of his enemy. Nor was he warned when he saw the sudden gleam in Samoval’s dark eyes. “Ha!” said the Count. It was a little exclamation of wicked satisfaction. “You are offering me a challenge, then?” “If I may make so bold. And as I’ve a mind to shoot you dead--” “Shoot, did you say?” Samoval interrupted gently. “I said ‘shoot’--and it shall be at ten paces, or across a handkerchief, or any damned distance you please.” The Count shook his head. He sneered. “I think not--not shoot.” And he waved the notion aside with a hand white and slender as a woman’s. “That is too English, or too Irish. The pistol, I mean--appropriately a fool’s weapon.” And he explained himself, explained at last his extraordinary forbearance under a blow. “If you think I have practised the small-sword every day of my life for ten years to suffer myself to be shot at like a rabbit in the end--ho, really!” He laughed aloud. “You have challenged me, I think, Sir Terence. Because I feared the predilection you have discovered, I was careful to wait until the challenge came from you. The choice of weapons lies, I think, with me. I shall instruct my friends to ask for swords.” “Sorry a difference will it make to me,” said Sir Terence. “Anything from a horsewhip to a howitzer.” And then recollection descending like a cold hand upon him chilled his hot rage, struck the fine Irish arrogance all out of him, and left him suddenly limp. “My God!” he said, and it was almost a groan. He detained Samoval, who had already turned to depart. “A moment, Count,” he cried. “I--I had forgotten. There is the general order--Lord Wellington’s enactment.” “Awkward, of course,” said Samoval, who had never for a moment been oblivious of that enactment, and who had been carefully building upon it. “But you should have considered it before committing yourself so irrevocably.”