"It has come to the duke's knowledge," continued that same nobleman, raising his tone to a slightly minatory pitch. "That another person, an Englishman, I should say an English nobleman, has, unwittingly I am ready to allow, been led into paying certain attentions to the lady in question. I am sure that to capable and clever men like yourselves it is not necessary for me to set myself the disagreeable task of pointing out the inevitable result of such an unwarranted and deplorable interference should it be persevered in."
He paused, took out a silk pocket-handkerchief embroidered with a flamboyant coronet and cypher, and passed it lightly across his lips, never taking his vicious eyes off the two men who had by this, under the paralysing gaze, assumed the appearance and almost the condition of a pair of waxworks.
As the lengthening pause seemed to demand a response, Gage with a great effort roused himself from the Tussaudy rigidity, and, with a desperate attempt at boldness, replied—
"You might let us know, while we are on the subject."
"No harm in mentioning it," Peckover chipped in with a somewhat ghastly pretence of a smile.
The little duke thrust back the handkerchief into his breast pocket, and then threw out his hands expressively. "I should have imagined," he replied, with a transcendentally threatening eye, "that men of the sagacity and penetration of your graces would have found no difficulty in deducing from the instances you have just heard with such admirable patience, the fate in store for any one who is rash enough to enter the lists with a Duke of Salolja."
His voice, rising with abrupt suddenness, thundered out the last words with a volume and intensity which made his rivals fairly jump in their uneasy seats. Anyhow, the wordy Grandee had come to the point, and the point had to be faced or run from.
Gage, whose mode of life had kept his nervous system in better order than his companion's, was the first to reply.
"That's all very well," he said, bracing himself to join issue with the fiery little Castilian, and assuming a courage he did not feel. "But this is a free country; and in these enlightened days you can't run a man through the body before lunch because your best girl has the good or bad taste to prefer him."
Fury leapt like a flame in the duke's eyes, but he replied calmly, even suavely, "Your excellency is wrong. What is to prevent me?"