“What girl was it?”
“Curse you! don’t ask questions.”
“Bah! What a fire-eater you are, Rockley. As if I did not know. So the fairy Clairy has been saying, ‘How dare you, sir?’ Ha—ha—ha!”
“Do you want to quarrel, man?” said the Major, with an angry look in his eye.
“Not I, old lad; not with you in that temper. So she has been riding the high horse, and bidding you keep your distance; and, just in the nick of time, she had her dear friend Dick Linnell there, and the strong-armed fool horsewhipped you.”
Rockley turned upon him savagely, and gripped him by the arm so fiercely that Sir Harry Payne involuntarily shrank away.
“Don’t!” cried the Major hoarsely. “Don’t! or I can’t answer for myself.”
“Why, Rockley!”
“Don’t speak to me. Man, I feel as if that Linnell had roused a devil in me, and till I see him on the turf helpless I shall know no rest. Were you ever beaten—cut—and wealed with your own whip?”
“Well, egad, not to put too fine a point on it, old lad, it was not with a whip; it was a walking cane.”