“Ah?” she looked up quickly, hopefully.
“A foot or so of steel,” Rotherby explained, and struck the hilt of his sword. “I might pick a quarrel with him. 'Twould not be difficult. Come upon him unawares, say, and strike him. That should force a fight.”
“Tusk, fool! He's all empanoplied in virtue where you are concerned. He'd use the matter of your affair with Caryll as a reason not to meet you, whatever you might do, and he'd set his grooms to punish any indignity you might put upon him.”
“He durst not.”
“Pooh! The town would all approve him in it since your running Caryll through the back. What a fool you were, Charles.”
He turned away, hanging his head, full conscious, and with no little bitterness, of how great had been his folly.
“Salvation may lie for you in the same source that has brought you to the present pass—this man Caryll,” said the countess presently. “I suspect him more than ever of being a Jacobite agent.”
“I know him to be such.”
“You know it?”
“All but; and Green is assured of it, too.” He proceeded to tell her what he knew. “Ever since Green met Caryll at Maidstone has he suspected him, yet but that I kept him to the task he would have abandoned it. He's in my pay now as much as in Lord Carteret's, and if he can run Caryll to earth he receives his wages from both sides.”