“She is too big a devil,” they said, “to care a fig for any man.  She would laugh in the face of the mightiest lady-killer in London, and flout him as if he were a mercer’s apprentice or a plough-boy.  He does not live who could trap her.”

With most of them, the noble sport of chasing women was their most exalted pastime.  They were like hunters on the chase of birds, the man who brought down the rarest creature of the wildest spirit and the brightest plumage was the man who was a hero for a day at least.

The winter my lord Duke of Marlborough spent at Hanover, Berlin, Vienna, and the Hague, engaged in negotiations and preparations for his campaign, and at Vienna his Grace of Osmonde joined him that they might talk face to face, even the great warrior’s composure being shaken by the disappointment of the year.  But a fortnight before his leaving England there came to Osmonde’s ear rumours of a story from Gloucestershire—­’twas of a nature more fantastic than any other, and far more unexpected.  The story was imperfectly told and without detail, and detail no man or woman seemed able to acquire, and baffled curiosity ran wild, no story having so whetted it as this last.

“But we shall hear later,” said one, “for ’tis said Jack Oxon was there, being on a visit to his kinsman, Lord Eldershawe, who has been the young lady’s playmate from her childhood.  Jack will come back primed and will strut about for a week and boast of his fortunes whether he can prove them or not.”

But this Osmonde did not hear, having already left town for a few days at Camylott, where my Lord Dunstanwolde accompanied him, and at the week’s end they went together to Warwickshire, and as on the occasion of Osmonde’s other visit, the first evening they were at the Wolde came my Lord Twemlow, more excited than ever before, and he knew and told the whole story.

“Things have gone from bad to worse,” he said, “and at last I sent my Chaplain as I had planned, and the man came back frightened out of his wits, having reached the hall-door in a panic and there found himself confronted by what he took to be a fine lad in hunting-dress making his dog practise jumping tricks.  And ’twas no lad, of course, but my fine mistress in her boy’s clothes, and she takes him to her father and makes a saucy jest of the whole matter, tossing off a tankard of ale as she sits on the table laughing at him and keeping Sir Jeoffry from breaking his head in a rage.  And in the end she sends an impudent message to me—­but says I am right, the shrewd young jade, and that she will see that no disgrace befalls me.  But for all that, the Chaplain came home in a cold sweat, poor fool, and knows not what to say when he speaks of her.”

“And then?” said my Lord Dunstanwolde, somewhat anxiously, “is it true—­that which we heard rumoured in town——­”