“It was the second night of my arrival at Paris, when I stepped into a noted gambling-house in the Rue des ——. The apartment was brilliantly lighted, and in the ostentatious luxury of its furniture reminded one of a fairy palace. It was densely crowded. I sauntered up to a table where they were playing vingt et un, and carelessly threw down a guinea upon the chance. I won. I was about turning indifferently away, when an individual approached the table, whom, even under his disguise, I recognised, in a moment, to be Conway. He threw down his stake. At that instant his eye caught mine. Never had I seen human countenance change so fearfully as his did during the instant of recognition. It quivered in every nerve. He turned paler than ashes. I looked at him, for a moment, sternly and calmly. His eye fell before mine. In an instant, however, he recovered, in a measure, his equanimity, and turning away with an air of affected indifference, whistled a careless tune. I stepped up to him.
“ ‘Dr. Conway,’ said I, ‘you are a scoundrel.’
“ ‘Sir, sir,’ stammered the abashed villain in French, affecting not to know me, ‘you mistake your man. I am Monsieur De Rivers, at your service.’
“ ‘Monsieur De Rivers then, if you please,’ said I, tauntingly, ‘I congratulate you on understanding a language which you affect not to be able to speak.’ The villain crimsoned and was abashed. ‘But think not you shall thus escape. You are my man; and without regard to the name under which at present you choose to go, I pronounce you again to be a scoundrel.’
“ ‘I—I,’ stammered Conway, ‘know you not. The gentleman is mad,’ he said, with a faint smile of contempt, turning to the crowd which had now gathered around us. A scornful look was the only reply. One of them even went so far as to say, shrugging his shoulders,
“ ‘Sacre—why don’t you fight? Can’t you see the gentleman means to insult you.’
“ ‘Crazy, did you say, villain?’ I exclaimed, stepping up to Conway, ‘I am sane enough to see that you are a coward as well as a scoundrel—do you understand me now?’ and deliberately taking him by the nose, I spat in his face.
“ ‘By God, sir,’ said he, his face blanched with rage, making him, for one moment, forget his fears, ‘this is too much. I am at your service. Here is my card. When shall it be?’
“ ‘The sooner the better,’ I hissed in his ear, as he turned to leave the room. ‘Let it be to-night.’
“ ‘Gentlemen,’ interposed a French officer, whom I knew casually, approaching us at my beck, ‘this matter had better be settled at once. Had it not?’ he continued, turning to Conway, or rather to an acquaintance of his, whom my enemy had singled out from the crowd as we left the room.