‘Gospel truth:  I knew the lady.’

‘And the rest?’

‘All true.’

’A thousand thanks.  I know now upon what ground I stand.  I have to save an innocent, high-bred girl from the clutches of a consummate scoundrel.’

’Shoot him, and shoot her, too, if there’s no better way of saving her.  It will be an act of mercy,’ said Mr. Fitzpatrick, without hesitation.

CHAPTER XLII.

‘SHALL IT BE?’

While Lord Hartfield sat in his friend’s office in Great George Street reading the life story of Gomez de Montesma, told with the cruel precision and the unvarnished language of a criminal indictment, the hero of that history was gliding round the spacious ballroom of the Cowes Club, with Lady Lesbia Haselden’s dark-brown head almost reclining on his shoulder, her violet eyes looking up at his every now and then, shyly, entrancingly, as he bent his head to talk to her.

The Squadron Ball was in full swing between midnight and the first hour of morning.  The flowers had not lost their freshness, the odours of dust and feverish human breath had not yet polluted the atmosphere.  The windows were open to the purple night, the purple sea.  The stars seemed to be close outside the verandah, shining on purpose for the dancers; and these two—­the man tall, pale, dark, with flashing eyes and short, sleek raven hair, small head, noble bearing; the girl divinely lovely in her marble purity of complexion, her classical grace of form—­these two were, as every one avowed and acknowledged, the handsomest couple in the room.

‘We’re none of us in it compared with them,’ said a young naval commander to his partner, whereupon the young lady looked somewhat sourly, and replied that Lady Lesbia’s features were undeniably regular and her complexion good, but that she was wanting in soul.

‘Is she?’ asked the sailor, incredulously, ’Look at her now.  What do you call that, if it isn’t soul?’

‘I call it simply disgraceful,’ answered his partner, sharply turning away her head.

Lesbia was looking up at the Spaniard, her lips faintly parted, all her face listening eagerly as she caught some whispered word, breathed among the soft ripples of her hair, from lips that almost touched her brow.  People cannot go on waltzing for ten minutes in a dead silence, like automatic dancers.  There must be conversation.  Only it is better that the lips should do most of the talking.  When the eyes have so much to say society is apt to be censorious.

Mr. Smithson was smoking a cigarette on the lawn with a sporting peer.  A man to whom tobacco is a necessity cannot be always on guard; but it is quite possible that in the present state of Lady Lesbia’s feelings Smithson would have had no restraining influence had he been ever so watchful.  To what act in the passion drama had her love come to-night as she floated round the room, with her head inclined towards her