The Prince de Borodino declared openly that Amethyst was engaged to him.  Crible de dettes, it is no wonder that he should choose such an opportunity to refaire sa fortune.  He gave out that he would kill any man who should cast an eye on the heiress, and the monster kept his word.  Major Grigg, of the Lifeguards, had already fallen by his hand at Ostend.  The O’Toole, who had met her on the Rhine, had received a ball in his shoulder at Coblentz, and did not care to resume so dangerous a courtship.  Borodino could snuff a bougie at a hundred and fifty yards.  He could beat Bertrand or Alexander Dumas himself with the small-sword:  he was the dragon that watched this pomme d’or, and very few persons were now inclined to face a champion si redoutable.

Over a salmi d’escargot at the “Coventry,” the dandies whom we introduced in our last volume were assembled, there talking of the heiress; and her story was told by Franklin Fox to Lord Bagnigge, who, for a wonder, was interested in the tale.  Borodino’s pretensions were discussed, and the way in which the fair Amethyst was confined.  Fitzbattleaxe House, in Belgrave Square, is—­as everybody knows—­the next mansion to that occupied by Amethyst.  A communication was made between the two houses.  She never went out except accompanied by the duchess’s guard, which it was impossible to overcome.

“Impossible!  Nothing’s impossible,” said Lord Bagnigge.

“I bet you what you like you don’t get in,” said the young Marquis of Martingale.

“I bet you a thousand ponies I stop a week in the heiress’s house before the season’s over,” Lord Bagnigge replied with a yawn; and the bet was registered with shouts of applause.

But it seemed as if the Fates had determined against Lord Bagnigge, for the very next day, riding in the Park, his horse fell with him; he was carried home to his house with a fractured limb and a dislocated shoulder; and the doctor’s bulletins pronounced him to be in the most dangerous state.

Martingale was a married man, and there was no danger of his riding by the Fitzbattleaxe carriage.  A fortnight after the above events, his lordship was prancing by her Grace’s great family coach, and chattering with Lady Gwinever about the strange wager.

“Do you know what a pony is, Lady Gwinever?” he asked.  Her ladyship said yes:  she had a cream-colored one at Castle Barbican; and stared when Lord Martingale announced that he should soon have a thousand ponies, worth five-and-twenty pounds each, which were all now kept at Coutts’s.  Then he explained the circumstances of the bet with Bagnigge.  Parliament was to adjourn in ten days; the season would be over!  Bagnigge was lying ill chez lui; and the five-and-twenty thousand were irrecoverably his.  And he vowed he would buy Lord Binnacle’s yacht—­crew, captain, guns and all.

On returning home that night from Lady Polkimore’s, Martingale found among the many billets upon the gold plateau in his antichambre, the following brief one, which made him start—­