"Nonsense!" said Neville. "Mr. Gaunt and I are going to fight: we are not going to brawl. Be so good as to leave us."
"Ay," said Griffith; "and if you repeat a word of all this, woe be to your skin!"
As soon as he was gone, Griffith Gaunt turned very grave and calm, and said to George Neville,—
"The Cumberland savage has been better taught than to expose the lady he loves to gossiping tongues."
Neville colored up to the eyes at this thrust.
Griffith continued,—
"The least you can do is to avoid fresh scandal."
"I shall be happy to coöperate with you so far," said Neville, stiffly. "I undertake to keep Galton silent; and for the rest, we have only to name an early hour for meeting, and confide it to but one discreet friend apiece who will attend us to the field. Then there will be no gossip, and no bumpkins nor constables breaking in: such things have happened in this country, I hear."
It was Wednesday. They settled to meet on Friday at noon on a hillside between Bolton and Neville's Court. The spot was exposed, but so wild and unfrequented that no interruption was to be feared. Mr. Neville being a practised swordsman, Gaunt chose pistols,—a weapon at which the combatants were supposed to be pretty equal. To this Neville very handsomely consented.
By this time a stiff and elaborate civility had taken the place of their heat, and at parting they bowed both long and low to each other.