“Damme, is the fellow drunk or mad!... What d’ye want?” he demanded.
“Horses!” answered Sir John and, smiling affably at the angry company, helped himself to a pinch of snuff. And now the trembling captive, finding herself thus momentarily forgotten, sprang from the table and was at Sir John’s elbow all in a moment; but he never so much as glanced at her, all his interest centred apparently in the flaxen curls of my Lord Sayle’s wig. “I am here, sir,” he went on, closing and fobbing his snuff-box, “to inform you that, learning you had engaged the only horses available, and deeming my own need of ’em the more urgent, I have taken the liberty of countermanding the animals to my own use.”
At this was a moment’s amazed stillness, then my lord laughed fiercely and leaned across the table to glare, his nostrils unpleasantly dilated.
“You are assuredly an ignorant fool, sir,” quoth he, “for ’tis certain you do not—cannot know me!”
“Nor desire to, sir!” murmured Sir John.
“I am Sayle—Lord Sayle! You’ll have heard the name, I fancy?”
“And mine, my lord, is Derwent, and you will never have heard it, I am sure. But what has all this to do with horses, pray?”
“This, my poor imbecile—and hark’ee, Mr. Derwent, I permit no man, or woman either for that matter, to thwart my whims, much less an unshaven young jackanapes like yourself! Therefore—and mark me! Unless you apologise instantly for your unbelievable impertinence and undertake to personally see that the horses are put to my chariot within the next ten minutes, I shall give myself the pleasure of horse-whipping you, here and now, before your trollop’s pretty face. Come, Mr. Derwent, what d’ye say?”
Sir John’s answer was characteristically gentle: “I say, my lord, that your manners are as gross as your person, and your person is infinitely offensive from any and every point o’ view!”