They were all talking in an excited fashion, and two Englishmen, pausing quite close to the trembling girl, were speaking loudly enough for her to hear.
"Rum kind of thing this affair to-night," said one.
"Isn't it? But it's just what one expects in Italy. Gives quite a foreign flavor to the evening," and he laughed cynically. "Fancy two men fighting a duel on such a paltry excuse as that! Why, I didn't hear anything particularly offensive, did you?"
"Not half so offensive as one hears fifty times over at a political meeting in England."
"But then these Italians are all fire, aren't they? And glad of the excuse for a shindy, eh?"
"Poor Blair!" rejoined the other, with a sigh. "Seems rather hard when you are an earl, with goodness knows how many thousands a year, and a charming wife, to be spitted by a fire-eating Italian. But, there, we all prophesied that Blair Leyton would come to a violent end; either a cropper in the field, or the racecourse."
"That's all right and consistent enough, and would appear to be the logical conclusion of such a man; but to be pierced through the heart with one of those confounded needles! Bah! And he is such a fine fellow, too! Never saw a better made man! Don't wonder all the women of his set were mad about him!"
"Yes, Blair is a good type of our best men," said the other. "But he may not fall: he used to fence awfully well in the old days, at Angelo's fencing-school, don't you know."
"I dare say, but fencing at Angelo's is a very different thing to crossing swords with a man like Rivani, especially when he means mischief, and if Rivani didn't mean mischief to-night, then I'm no judge of a man's looks."
They passed on, and left Lottie amazed in her ambush.