One evening Guy had been lingering for some time in the Bellasys’ box at the Opera.  As he went out into the foyer he saw an old acquaintance coming toward him.

Lord Killowen was past sixty:  the world had used him roughly, and he had been ruined very early in life, but he bore both years and troubles lightly.  Looking at his smooth forehead, and square, erect figure, and listening to his ready, cheery laugh, you would never have guessed how long he had led that guerrilla existence—­for forty years keeping the bailiffs at bay.  His nerve and his seat in the saddle were as firm as they were on the first night of his joining the ——­ Hussars, when he rode Kicking Kate over the iron pales round Hounslow Barrack-yard, and hit the layers of the long odds for a cool thousand.

He had been intimate with Colonel Livingstone, and had known his son from childhood; but he was a still closer friend of the Brandon family, with whom, indeed, he was distantly connected.  He had never seen Guy since the breaking off of the latter’s engagement till this night, when he caught a glimpse of his lofty head bending over Flora Bellasys’ chair.

Lord Killowen’s blood was as hot and his impulses as quick as if he had not yet seen his twentieth winter, and the chivalry within him was stirred at what he considered an insolent parade of treachery; for he had guessed much of what had happened, though he did not know all the truth; so he passed Guy’s extended hand, turning his head studiously aside.

The latter was startled for a moment, but he could not believe in an intentional “cut,” and he knew his friend to be rather short-sighted; so with one stride he overtook him, and, touching him on the shoulder, said, “I must be very much changed if you do not know me, Lord Killowen.”

The brave old Irishman turned short upon his heel and confronted the speaker, bending on him all the light of his clear blue eyes:  he drew himself up to the full height of a stature that nearly equaled Livingstone’s, and said, coolly and slowly, “Pardon me, you are not changed in the least; I know you very well.”

The insult was palpable.  Guy fairly staggered as if he had received a sword-thrust; then the angry blood rushed up to his temples, making the veins start out like muscles, and he spoke in a voice hoarse and indistinct with passion, “You will answer this.”

True, his antagonist was more than old enough to have been his father, but in feast, field, and fray, Lord Killowen remembered his own age so seldom that other men might be excused for forgetting it sometimes.

The old man was going to answer eagerly, but he checked himself with an effort, as if repressing a strong temptation; when, after some seconds, he spoke, there was more of sadness and warning than of anger in his tone.

“No, I will not fight, even in this quarrel, with your father’s son; besides, I might be anticipating one who has a better right.  Four days ago Cyril Brandon landed from India.”