"A duel?" I asked.
"He was never seen again, my dear!" replied Mrs. Knox. (There are moments, in Ireland, when this term of affection is used not so much affectionately as confidentially.)
At this point the door opened. Mrs. Knox put the goblin finger on her lips, as Philippa, still in her habit, slid into the room.
"The patient and Meg are extremely self-sufficing," she said, dropping into a chair. "His face is turning all colours of the rainbow, and one eye has disappeared, but the other is full of expression and is fixed on Meg!"
"There's not much colour about you," I said. "You ought to have a whisky and soda."
"Nonsense!" said Philippa, waving me away; "we've got most of the black stuff out of his hair; even his waistcoat pocket was full of it! And bits of the torn paper had stuck to it, like confetti."
"That suggests a wedding," I observed.
"Quite," said Philippa. "But the absurd thing was that one of the confetti—obviously a bit of those old letters that the children tore up—had the word 'Apollo' on it! It was stuck on to him like a label."
Mrs. Knox clasped her hands, and lay back in her chair.
"I said it was, of course, a tribute to his beauty, but Meg was not at all amused. She thought it was 'lèse majesté.'"