"Apologise to the devil!" rejoined Douglas, as he threw away his corslet and plumed hat, drew his rapier, and stood on the defensive, while his antagonist confronted him in the same manner. Handsome, richly garbed, graceful, and athletic, they would have formed a noble study for an artist, as they remained steadily watching each other, their eyes sparkling, and their long keen blades gleaming like blue fire in the moonlight. Such was the aspect they presented when the terrified girls hurried by a circuitous path towards them.
"Oh! Finland—Finland!" muttered Annie.
A well-bred man of the present day, on seeing a lady, whose hand he had engaged, dancing with another, would not take any unpleasant notice of it, however mortifying the preference might be; but not so the bold cavalier of the seventeenth century. To fight or be dishonoured were the only alternatives. Craigdarroch was infuriated, and Finland rapidly found his blood boiling up in turn; but ere a blow could be struck, his beautiful Annie, like a fairy or angel of peace, glided between them, and the menacing points of the rapiers were lowered at her approach.
"Sheath your swords this instant, sirs!" said she, with a half-playful, half-earnest imperiousness, which the gentlemen showed no disposition to resist. "Up with them! and remember it was an ancient rule of chivalry that knights combatants became friends at a woman's approach. Come hither, Mr. Holster, and tell me what these gay rufflers have quarrelled about."
"Yourself, fair madam," replied Holsterlee, a tall athletic young man, whose fair complexion consorted ill with a sable wig, and in whose sporting air there was a certain jaunty swagger, bordering on the vulgar, but acquired chiefly by frequenting Blair's Coffee-house at the Pillars, the Race-course at Leith, and every tavern and stew wherever he happened to be quartered—Clermistonlee's furious dinner-parties, and the company of all the horsemongers, bucks, bullies, and courtezans in the city;—"yourself, fair madam; and on my honour, I know no prize in all broad Scotland so well worth tempting buff under bilboa for."
"Prize, sir!" retorted Annie. "Do you talk of me as if I were your famous roan horse, or the city purse you expect it to win at Easter? Go to, sir! Certes, gentlemen, you honour me greatly by accounting me merely a sword-player's prize—the guerdon of a duello between two cut-throats! I am infinitely obliged to you," she added curtseying low. "But if you are determined to fight, O do so, good sirs," she continued, with a merry laugh; "but I am not for you, Finland, at all events."
"Indeed! madam," rejoined Finland, as he bit his nether lip, and grasped his sword. "Craigdarroch, then, I presume is the favoured——"
"Nor he either, quotha!"
"Ha, ha!—ho, ho!" shouted Holsterlee. "May the great diabulus roast me in my own ribs if this isn't good! Who then, fair Annie?"
"What is it to such as thee, sirrah?" she replied, stamping her pretty foot scornfully; but the beautiful rogue laughed as she added slowly, "I have not yet made up my mind whether to accept Sir Thomas Dalyel of the Binns, or that very accomplished cavalier——"