“Good Lord!” gasped the duke.

“Diable!” sputtered the count.

“Splendid!” cried Penelope, her eyes sparkling.

“Hang it all, Pen, don’t interrupt the count,” snorted Bazelhurst, for want of something better to say and perhaps hoping that Deveaux might say in French what could not be uttered in English.

“Don’t say it in French, count,” said little Miss Folsom.  “It deserves English.”

“Go on, James,” sternly, from Lady Bazelhurst.

“Well, neither of us can swim, your ladyship, an’ we’d ‘a’ drowned if Mr.—­if Shaw hadn’t jumped in himself an’ pulled us out.  As it was, sir, Tompkins was unconscious.  We rolled him on a log, sir, an’ got a keg of water out of him.  Then Mr.—­er—­Shaw told us to go ’ome and get in bed, sir.”

“He sent a message to you, sir,” added Tompkins, shivering mightily.

“Well, I’ll have one for him, never fear,” said his lordship, glancing about bravely.  “I won’t permit any man to assault my servants and brutally maltreat them.  No, sir!  He shall hear from me—­or my attorney.”

“He told us to tell you, sir, that if he ever caught anybody from this place on his land he’d serve him worse than he did us,” said Tompkins.

“He says, ‘I don’t want no Bazelhursts on my place,’” added James in finality.

“Go to bed, both of you!” roared his lordship.

“Very good, sir,” in unison.

“They can get to bed without your help, I daresay, Pen,” added his lordship caustically, as she started away with them.  Penelope with a rare blush and—­well, one party went to luncheon while the other went to bed.

“I should like to see this terrible Mr. Shaw,” observed Penelope at table.  “He’s a sort of Jack-the-Giant-Killer, I fancy.”

“He is the sort one has to meet in America,” lamented her ladyship.

“Oh, I say now,” expostulated the New York young man, wryly.

“I don’t mean in good society,” she corrected, with unconscious irony.

“Oh,” said he, very much relieved.

“He’s a demmed cad,” Said his lordship conclusively.

“Because he chucked your men into the river?” asked Penelope sweetly.

“She’s dooced pretty, eh?” whispered the duke to Mrs. De Peyton without taking his eyes from his young countrywoman’s face.

“Who?” asked Mrs. De Peyton.  Then he relinquished his gaze and turned his monocle blankly upon the American beside him.

“I shall send him a warning that he’ll have to respect, cad or no cad,” said Bazelhurst, absently spreading butter upon his fingers instead of the roll.

“Send him a warning?” asked his queenly wife.  “Aren’t you going to see him personally?  You can’t trust the servants, it seems.”

“My dear, I can’t afford to lose my temper and engage in a row with that bounder, and there’s no end of trouble I might get into—­”

“I shall see him myself, if you won’t,” said her ladyship firmly.  There was frigid silence at the table for a full minute, relieved only when his lordship’s monocle dropped into the glass of water he was trying to convey to his lips.  He thought best to treat the subject lightly, so he laughed in his most jovial way.