Chapter Thirteen.
Challenging the Challenger.
“In faith, I’ve done a very foolish thing,” reflected the young Irishman, as he entered his dormitory, and flung himself into a chair. “Still there was no help for it. Such talk as that, even from a stranger like Dick Swinton, would play the deuce with me. Of course they don’t know him here; and he appears to be playing a great part among them; no doubt plucking such half-fledged pigeons as those with him below.
“Very likely he said something of the same to the girl’s mother—to herself? Perhaps that’s why I’ve been treated so uncourteously! Well, I have him on the hip now; and shall make him repent his incautious speeches. Kicked out of the British service! Lying cur, to have said it! To have thought of such a thing! And from what I’ve heard it’s but a leaf from his own history! This may have suggested it. I don’t believe he’s any longer in the Guards: else what should he be doing out here? Guardsmen don’t leave London and its delights without strong, and generally disagreeable, reasons. I’d lay all I’ve got he’s been disgraced. He was on the edge of it when I last heard of him.
“He’ll fight of course? He wouldn’t if he could help it—I know the sweep well enough for that. But I’ve given him no chance to get out of it. A kid glove across the face, to say nothing of a threat to spit in it—with a score of strange gentlemen looking on and listening! If ten times the poltroon he is, he dare not show the white feather now.
“Of course he’ll call me out; and what am I to do for a second? The three or four fellows I’ve scraped companionship with here are not the men—one of them. Besides, none of them might care to oblige me on such short acquaintance?
“What the deuce am I to do? Telegraph to the Count?” he continued, after a pause spent in reflecting. “He’s in New York, I know; and know he would come on at once. It’s just the sort of thing would delight the vieux sabreur, now that the Mexican affair is ended, and he’s once more compelled to sheathe his revolutionary sword. Come in! Who the deuce knocks at a gentleman’s door at this unceremonious hour?”
It was not yet 5 a.m. Outside the hotel could be heard carriage wheels rolling off with late roisterers, who had outstayed the ball.