"You were waiting for me, M. Mitford?" said Tchernigow. "I am sorry to have detained you; but it was unavoidable. You used words just now--in a moment of anger doubtless--which you are already probably sorry for."
"They were words which I used intentionally and with deliberation," said Mitford. "I spoke of some man--then to me unnamed--who had come between me and Mrs. Hammond--"
"I scarcely understand the meaning of the phrase 'come between,' M. Mitford. It is doubtless my ignorance of your language to which I must ascribe it. But how could any one 'come between' a married man and a widow--granting, of course, that the married man is a man of honour?"
Mitford ground his teeth, but was silent.
"And supposing always," continued Tchernigow, "that there was some one sufficiently interested in the widow to object to any 'coming between'?--some one who had proposed himself in marriage to her, and who intended to make her his wife?"
The truth flashed across Mitford in an instant. He was beaten on all sides; but there was yet a chance of revenge.
"And suppose there were such a fool," he said,--"which, I very much doubt,--the words I used I would use again, and if need were, I would cram them down his throat!"
"Eh bien, M. Mitford!" said Tchernigow, changing his language, but ever keeping his quiet tone,--"eh bien! M. Mitford, décidément vous êtes un lâche!"
A crash, a gathering of a little crowd, and the waiter-who was so like Bouffé--raised Prince Tchernigow from the ground, with a little blood oozing from a spot beneath his temple. "He had stumbled over a chair," he said; "but it was nothing."
In deep consultation with his stick, Lord Dollamore was lounging round the outer ring at the roulette-table, when Sir Charles Mitford, with a flushed face and dishevelled hair, with rumpled wristbands and shirt-collar awry, made his way to him, and begged for a few minutes' conversation apart.