"Perhaps," she said, with an angry, scornful laugh, "Mr. O'Hara will now deny that he and his servants attacked my chairmen in the dark, threw me, screaming with terror, into his carriage, and that his intention was avowedly to wed me by force in London to-morrow."
All eyes were fixed on the Irishman, and silence waited upon his reply. He had grown so pale that his red head seemed to flame by contrast. He made a low bow.
"No, Kitty," said he, in a very gentle voice, "I deny nothing." Then sweeping the company with a haughty glance. "This lady," said he, "has spoken truth; as for me, I am ready to meet the consequences of my conduct."
His eye finally rested once more on Lord Verney. The latter grew white and then scarlet; while Spicer whispered and again jogged.
"Of course," blustered the youth, and wished that he had the curious digestion of his contemporaries, that his stomach did not so squeamishly rebel at the prospect of a dose of steel, "of course, sir, you must be aware——"
"It shall be swords," interrupted the irrepressible Spicer; "and gad, sir, what my noble friend will have left of your body I will myself make mince of this night! Aye, sir," said the Captain, beginning to squint as was his wont under excitement, and slapping his bony chest; "I will fight you myself, sir."
"Fight you!" exclaimed O'Hara, suddenly stung into magnificent contempt. "Fight you, sir?" he ran a withering eye over the grasshopper anatomy of the toady as he spoke, "you, sir, you, the writer of that dirty note this morning, bidding me apologise—apologise!" cried Denis, with his most luscious brogue, "to the man, Sir Jasper there, for having insulted you on the subject of your miserable mealy head—fight you, sir? Sure, rather than fight you," said Mr. O'Hara, searching for the most emphatic asseveration conceivable, "I'd never fight again for the rest of my life! But I'll tell you what I'll do for you: next time you thrust that ugly face of yours within the reach of me arm Oi'll pull your nose till it's as long as your tongue, and as slender as your courage, damme!"
"Oh, gad! what a low scoundrel," murmured Captain Spicer, withdrawing quickly several paces, and with an intensified cast in his eye; "'tis positive unfit for a gentleman to speak to him!"
"Now, my lord?" said O'Hara, resuming his easy dignity.
But that her comedy should drift into tragedy was none of Mistress Kitty's intentions. Briskly stepping between the laboriously pugnacious Verney and the poor Irishman, whose eye (for all his present composure) shone with the lust of the fray, she thus addressed them collectively and in turn: