Poor De Vere sat in his bedroom and was ill.
"If I look out into the corridor, I know I shall see that beast Williams," he sobbed.
"Where's that French fool, Rivaulx?" asked Gordon. They all believed the other was the scoundrel of the dreadful drama.
And then the evening papers came in. They declared in big lines that there had been "A Fracas in High Life." They added that it had taken place in the Row at four o'clock that very afternoon. They went on to say that Lord Bramber and the Marquis de Rivaulx, well known as a great sportsman and a balloonist, had fought in a flower-bed, and had been torn from each other's arms and a big rhododendron by two dukes, three earls, and a viscount. They further declared that it was a matter of public notoriety that all the trouble rose out of the mystery connected with the Times and Lady Penelope Brading. They promised more details in later editions.
"They'll fight," said Gordon, savagely. "I hope they'll kill each other. But especially I hope that the marquis will be killed first and most!"
And about eleven o'clock Rivaulx turned up with his chauffeur and a bad black eye.
"He shall fight me here," said Rivaulx. "This is a quiet town. No one will think of Spilsborough! He does not know that she sent me a telegram from here!"
He put up at the Angel, and escaped seeing the others for the time. On his way up he had sent a defiant telegram to Bramber, desiring him to come to Spilsborough, and fight there with swords or pistols or any weapon that commended itself to him. This telegram Bramber never got, for, on reaching home and washing away the traces of the struggle in Hyde Park before all the loveliness of London, he had found his telegram from Spilsborough sent by Geordie Smith. After looking in the ABC guide, and finding no good train, he pelted off in his motor-car, leaving a note for Rivaulx, saying that, though duels were absurd and illegal, he would not refuse to meet the marquis in France or Belgium, if he desired to make a bigger fool of himself than he had already done in the park.
"Curse and confound them all," said Bramber, who was horribly cross and exceedingly sick of the whole world, even including Penelope. "I wonder what she means by this telegram. I wish I was dead! Is she at Spilsborough?"
Just in the middle of Spilsborough he met Rivaulx and pulled up short, not having the least notion, of course, that he would meet him there. But Rivaulx grinned a ghastly smile and raised his hat, as Bramber stopped.