She kept him in the anteroom while she despatched a swift messenger to her lawyer asking for a policeman to take Payne into custody. Lind Mason's second, it will be observed, had had every assurance that his principal was fighting his aunt's quarrel, and looked for no small share of commendation for his own zeal and services. He had time to hear the regular movements of a great household revolving about the pivotal dinner-hour before he rang a second time. Then the mulatto maid, Memmie, appeared: "This way, sah. Yalla Memmie done knowed ye when ye could tie you'se'f in a cawnah o' yo' pock't-hankchah and put yo'se'f in yo' pock't."

Pondering on such precocious jugglery of his early years, he was ushered into the dowager's boudoir, where she sat with Sudie and ma'amselle.

"Be seated, Mr. Payne," she said with that royal gesture of command habitual to power in her sphere. "I am glad to see you. You are at the bottom of this bloody business."

Payne took breath as from a sudden douche, and began a speech conned over in the carriage: "In a crisis involving the honor of a noble family—"

"I know the false and criminal jargon by which you justify your barbarous code," interrupted the haughty dowager. "It lacks that manly directness I require in all who address me. Why, sir, did you avail yourself of a quick-tempered old woman's hasty words to force her wretched nephew into wicked folly? How dared you intercept my messenger?" sharply, as if at a new and sudden offence just sprung.

All this was astounding to Payne as the caresses of a tigress; but his too was a bold, high temper when aroused, and he retorted: "Madam, if you desire your nephew to be kicked and cuffed and driven from his cousin's house, it cannot be as Wylde Payne's friend. Your messenger was excluded by Captain Mason's orders, he having matters more important in hand than the intermeddling of a lady who had forced him into this business, but who now makes a merit of deserting him and abusing those who decline to act as treacherously."

The hot shot went home to the magazine, for the dowager rose blazing: "I know you for murder's lackey, and the cheap notoriety you seek, at the cost of your friend's courage and life, as the witness of his assassination, ready to testify it was well and fairly done—the base policeman of murder, to guard guilt in its guiltiness as the law protects the innocent in innocency. But you shall not escape: mark that!"

"I am responsible for my actions and easy to find," said Payne. "I scorn a law that presumes to enter into my feelings and judge the measure of my wounded honor."

"Weigh your words well," said the dowager—"you who presume to sit in judgment on the honor of a Brown! Public opinion is ripe to break the shackles of this vile code. No mail of chivalry protects the second who stands coolly by, a participant and accessory without risk or danger, to justify the black murder done on his bosom friend. When wealth and social influence are thrown into the scale against one who caught up a rash woman's hasty word, as hastily repented, we shall know what the law thinks of one who excluded her messenger of peace and pressed his victim on to the murdering-ground."

Angry as she was, the old lady was putting her points well. Payne's position was already very equivocal. Common rumor presented him as forcing that Boabdil Mason to the mark; but he answered contemptuously, "You have already appealed to the law, and know the result."