“Bah! there’s been enough pass between us. I leave you time to reflect. My room is 209, on the fourth storey. I hope you’ll find a friend who won’t be above climbing to it. My card, sir!”
Swinton took the card, and with fingers that showed trembling gave his own in exchange. While with a scornful glance, that comprehended both him and his acolytes, the other faced back to the bar, coolly completed his potation, and, without saying another word, reascended the stairway.
“You’ll meet him, won’t you?” asked the older of Swinton’s drinking companions.
It was not a very correct interrogatory; but, perhaps, judging by what had passed, the man who put it may have deemed delicacy superfluous.
“Of cawse—of cawse,” replied he of Her Majesty’s Horse Guards, without taking note of the rudeness. “Demmed awkward, too!” he continued, reflectingly. “I am here a stwanger—no fwend—”
“Oh, for that matter,” interrupted Lucas, the owner of the Newfoundland dog, “there need be no difficulty. I shall be most happy to act as your second.”
The man who thus readily volunteered his services was as arrant a poltroon as could have been found about the fashionable hostelry in which the conversation was taking place—not excepting Swinton himself. He, too, had good cause for playing principal in a duel with Captain Maynard. But it was safer to be second; and no man knew this better than Louis Lucas.
It would not be the first time for him to act in this capacity. Twice before had he done so, obtaining by it a sort of borrowed éclat that was mistaken for bravery. For all this he was in reality a coward; and though smarting under the remembrance of his encounter with Maynard, he had allowed the thing to linger without taking further steps. The quarrel with Swinton was therefore in good time, and to his hand.
“Either I, or my friend here,” he added.
“With pleasure,” assented the other.