‘Ay, ay!  Silence!’ the chairman called.

Mr. Raikes begged permission to pronounce his excuses, but lapsed into a lamentation for the squandering of property bequeathed to him by his respected uncle, and for which—­as far as he was intelligible—­he persisted in calling the three offensive young cricketers opposite to account.

Before he could desist, Harmony, no longer coy, burst on the assembly from three different sources.  ‘A Man who is given to Liquor,’ soared aloft with ‘The Maid of sweet Seventeen,’ who participated in the adventures of ‘Young Molly and the Kicking Cow’; while the guests selected the chorus of the song that first demanded it.

Evan probably thought that Harmony was herself only when she came single, or he was wearied of his fellows, and wished to gaze a moment on the skies whose arms were over and around his young beloved.  He went to the window and threw it up, and feasted his sight on the moon standing on the downs.  He could have wept at the bitter ignominy that severed him from Rose.  And again he gathered his pride as a cloak, and defied the world, and gloried in the sacrifice that degraded him.  The beauty of the night touched him, and mixed these feelings with mournfulness.  He quite forgot the bellow and clatter behind.  The beauty of the night, and heaven knows what treacherous hope in the depths of his soul, coloured existence warmly.

He was roused from his reverie by an altercation unmistakeably fierce.

Raikes had been touched on a tender point.  In reply to a bantering remark of his, Laxley had hummed over bits of his oration, amid the chuckles of his comrades.  Unfortunately at a loss for a biting retort, Raikes was reduced to that plain confession of a lack of wit; he offered combat.

’I ‘ll tell you what,’ said Laxley, ’I never soil my hands with a blackguard; and a fellow who tries to make fun of Scripture, in my opinion is one.  A blackguard—­do you hear?  But, if you’ll give me satisfactory proofs that you really are what I have some difficulty in believing the son of a gentleman—­I ’ll meet you when and where you please.’

‘Fight him, anyhow,’ said Harry.  ’I ’ll take him myself after we finish the match to-morrow.’

Laxley rejoined that Mr. Raikes must be left to him.

‘Then I’ll take the other,’ said Harry.  ‘Where is he?’

Evan walked round to his place.

‘I am here,’ he answered, ‘and at your service.’

‘Will you fight?’ cried Harry.

There was a disdainful smile on Evan’s mouth, as he replied:  ’I must first enlighten you.  I have no pretensions to your blue blood, or yellow.  If, sir, you will deign to challenge a man who is not the son of a gentleman, and consider the expression of his thorough contempt for your conduct sufficient to enable you to overlook that fact, you may dispose of me.  My friend here has, it seems, reason to be proud of his connections.  That you may not subsequently bring the charge against me of having led you to “soil your hands”—­as your friend there terms it—­I, with all the willingness in the world to chastise you or him for your impertinence, must first give you a fair chance of escape, by telling you that my father was a tailor.’