'You know the grounds well,' said Wogan.
'It is my first visit,' replied Scrope, with a trace of bitterness, 'but I have been told enough of them to know my way.'
He stepped forward and opened the gate. Outside in the road stood a travelling chaise with a pair of horses harnessed to it.
'There is no one within view,' said Wogan. The road ran to right and left empty as far as the eye could reach; in front stretched the empty fields.
'No one,' said Mr. Scrope, and he looked up to the sky.
'Well, I would as lief take my last look at the sunlight as at anything else, and I doubt not it is the same with you.'
Wogan, in spite of himself, began to entertain a certain liking for the man. He had accepted each stroke of ill-fortune--his discomfiture at Lady Oxford's hands, the grapple on the steps, and now this duel--without disputation. Moreover Wogan was wondering whether or no the man had some real grievance against her ladyship and what motive brought him, in what expectation, in his chaise to Brampton Bryan. He felt indeed a certain compunction for his behaviour, and he said doubtfully,
'Mr. Scrope, you and I might have been very good friends in other circumstances.'
'I doubt it very much, Mr. Wogan.' Scrope shook his head and smiled. 'Your poetry would always have come between us. I would really sooner die than praise it.'
He looked up and down the road as he spoke, and then made an almost imperceptible nod at his coachman.