“I will.”
“Enough!” answered Mordaunt. “Remember that if you commit the least act that can be thought dangerous I may not be able to preserve you from the military. As it is, your meeting will be unopposed.”
Contrary to Lord Ulswater’s prediction, the meeting went off as quietly as an elderly maiden’s tea-party. The speakers, even Wolfe, not only took especial pains to recommend order and peace, but avoided, for the most part, all inflammatory enlargement upon the grievances of which they complained. And the sage foreboders of evil, who had locked up their silver spoons, and shaken their heads very wisely for the last week, had the agreeable mortification of observing rather an appearance of good humour upon the countenances of the multitude than that ferocious determination against the lives and limbs of the well-affected which they had so sorrowfully anticipated.
As Mordaunt (who had been present during the whole time of the meeting) mounted his horse and quitted the ground, Lord Ulswater, having just left his quarters, where he had been all day in expectation of some violent act of the orators or the mob demanding his military services, caught sight of him with a sudden recollection of his own passionate threat. There had been nothing in Mordaunt’s words which would in our times have justified a challenge; but in that day duels were fought upon the slightest provocation. Lord Ulswater therefore rode up at once to a gentleman with whom he had some intimate acquaintance, and briefly saying that he had been insulted both as an officer and gentleman by Mr. Mordaunt, requested his friend to call upon that gentleman and demand satisfaction.
“To-morrow,” said Lord Ulswater, “I have the misfortune to be unavoidably engaged. The next day you can appoint place and time of meeting.”
“I must first see the gentleman to whom Mr. Mordaunt may refer me,” said the friend, prudently; “and perhaps your honour may be satisfied without any hostile meeting at all.”
“I think not,” said Lord Ulswater, carelessly, as he rode away; “for Mr. Mordaunt is a gentleman, and gentlemen never apologize.”
Wolfe was standing unobserved near Lord Ulswater while the latter thus instructed his proposed second. “Man of blood,” muttered the republican; “with homicide thy code of honour, and massacre thine interpretation of law, by violence wouldst thou rule, and by violence mayst thou perish!”