It would have been difficult, I think, to have found another, among living men, both by constitution and temperament, so inaccessible to material terrors as Livingstone, yet when that name came upon him thus suddenly he felt a thrill and a start through his nerves, so unpleasantly like commonplace physical fear that ever, when he thought of it, it made his cheek burn with shame.  He could not, after that, controvert gallant Lannes’ maxim:  “It is only a coward who says that he never was afraid.”

He stood silently, and allowed Lord Killowen to pass him, bowing courteously, though coldly, to him.  The latter never knew what mischief he had done.  After that momentary sensation had passed off, all the worst elements of Guy’s stubborn, haughty nature rose in rebellion at what he deemed a despicable weakness.  As if in defiance of the consequences, all that evening and on the succeeding days he devoted himself to Flora Bellasys with such unusual ardor that it made her nervous:  she thought it was too good to last.

When Mohun heard what had happened, he would not admit that there was the slightest chance of a meeting with Cyril Brandon, though he knew the character of the latter—­fierce and intractable to a degree.

“Don’t flatter yourself you will wipe off the score in that way,” he said to Guy, with his sardonic laugh.  “Men will quarrel over cards and about lorettes easily enough, but who fights for a ‘broken covenant’ now?  We live two hundred years too late.”

Ralph remembered how long he had lingered on the French seaboard waiting for a challenge from beyond the Channel which never came, though there was deeper provocation to justify it.

A few mornings after this had occurred Livingstone found himself without a servant.  His demeanor toward this estimable class had always been imperious and stern to a fault, but latterly they, as well as others, had felt the effects of his exasperated temper, and he was sometimes brutally overbearing in his reprimands.  On this particular occasion he must have been unusually oppressive, for it exhausted the patience of the much-enduring Willis, so that the worm turned again—­insolently.

Before he had said ten words his master interrupted him, his eye turning toward a heavy horsewhip that lay near with an expression that made Willis retreat toward the door.

“So you have robbed me of enough to make you independent?  Very well; make your book up; the maitre d’hotel will settle with you.  You will carry away some of my property, of course?  I shall not trouble myself to have your trunks searched, but if you take any thing that I happen to want afterward, I’ll have you arrested, wherever you are.  Now go.”

The man left the room sulkily:  an hour later he returned.  “I am going this instant, Mr. Livingstone; but I could tell you something first that you ought to know, if you would promise not to be violent.  I am very sorry now I did it.”  There was a curious expression—­half spiteful, half frightened—­on his cunning face as he spoke.