‘The cleverest, best-fought fight I ever saw—and I believe there was a bit something of what you’re meanin’ in it—was, strange to say, twixt a man and a woman—leastways, a gentleman an’ a lady. It was a fair battle, proper fightin’ on her side; for she was sworn to win, and sair wishful to punish him, I’s warn’d; and he, though he was tarr’ble keen to win too, found it took him all his time to keep her from letting daylight into him—an’, by the way, this is the varra tale ye used always to be askin’ for, an’ I’ll tell it ye noo, for ye’ve improved i’ your fencin’, I’m thinkin’, since ye began. You’ll have heard tell of Squire Dennington of Dennington Hall? A great rider he was once, and a sportsman generally—“Jockey Jack” his own private friends called him, and his horse, “Pit Laddie”—ye’ll heard of him?—won the “Plate” some thirty years back.
‘Well, his lady, Mrs. Dennington, was just the proudest woman in the whole county of Northumberland—scarcely what ye would call “bonny,” but just tarr’ble handsome, and the Squire, he fair worships her. He had married her in Berlin, and there was some queer odds an’ ends o’ stories about her, but he’d never have hearkened to [them] any more than he would listen to anyone shoutin’ to him the way to go out hunting.
‘He was in the army at that time, ye ken—the Northumberland Fusiliers, “The Old and Bold,” with “Where the Fates calls ye” in Latin for their motto—and I was his man-servant, joining the army along of him, as my forbears had often done with his forbears beforetime.
‘The Squire had to go out to Berlin with his mother, and he gets leave for me to accompany him, and there it was that he met with his lady that was to be—Miss Maxwell as she was then.
‘She was the handsomest woman in Berlin, ’twas said, but quite poor, living as a companion with the wife of one of the Ambassador’s party, being a kind of cousin, and many were the stories about her.
‘Gossip said that one of them grand dukes with a name a yard long had wanted her for his mistress, but when he made his proposition he got such an answer that he never dared speak to her again. Then it was reported that she was engaged to the Ambassador’s chief secretary, Oxencourt his name was—Sir Henry Oxencourt as he is now—and that she had even run away with him, but that at the last moment he turned round and said that he couldn’t afford to marry her till his father died, so there and then she leaves him, walks the night through till she can get a conveyance, and arrives just in time to stay the mouth of scandal from ruining her reputation.
‘Well, the Squire meets her, falls desperately into love—for he cares nothing for gossips—and in three weeks’ time she accepts him for good and all.
‘They marries at once, and travel for a year or more, and finally settle down at Dennington Hall.
‘The Squire after a bit sends for me, buys my discharge, makes me his body-servant, and sets up the old banqueting-room as a fencing hall—for he was always tarr’ble keen at fencing, boxing, single-stick, and all manly sports—and it was part of my duty to give them both a turn of fencing most mornings of the week.
‘Well, one winter, after about three years of marriage, the Squire goes off to Algeria to shoot gazelle, leaving Mrs. Dennington and his sister behind at the Hall, and he hadn’t been gone more than a week before Sir Henry Oxencourt turns up at the Hall.