Dr. Shrapnel flashed back:  ’I acknowledge?  Mercy and justice! is there no peace with the man?  You walk here to me, I can’t yet guess why, from a town where I have enemies, and every scandal flies touching me and mine; and you—­’ He stopped short to master his anger.  He subdued it so far as to cloak it in an attempt to speak reasoningly, as angry men sometimes deceive themselves in doing, despite the good maxim for the wrathful—­speak not at all.  ‘See,’ said he, ’I was never married.  My dear friend dies, and leaves me his child to protect and rear; and though she bears her father’s name, she is most wrongly and foully made to share the blows levelled at her guardian.  Ay, have at me, all of you, as much as you will!  Hold off from her.  Were it true, the cowardice would be not a whit the smaller.  Why, casting a stone like that, were it the size of a pebble and the weight of a glance, is to toss the whole cowardly world on an innocent young girl.  And why suspect evil?  You talk of that lady who paid me a visit here once, and whom I treated becomingly, I swear.  I never do otherwise.  She was a handsome woman; and what was she?  The housekeeper of Captain Beauchamp’s uncle.  Hear me, if you please!  To go with the world, I have as good a right to suppose the worst of an attractive lady in that situation as you regarding my ward:  better warrant for scandalizing, I think; to go with the world.  But now—­’

Cecil checked him, ejaculating, ’Thank you, Dr. Shrapnel; I thank you most cordially,’ with a shining smile.  ’Stay, sir! no more.  I take my leave of you.  Not another word.  No “buts”!  I recognize that conciliation is out of the question:  you are the natural protector of poachers, and you will not grant me an interview with the young lady you call your ward, that I may represent to her, as a person we presume to have a chance of moving you, how easily—­I am determined you shall hear me, Dr. Shrapnel!—­how easily the position of Captain Beauchamp may become precarious with his uncle Mr. Romfrey.  And let me add—­“but” and “but” me till Doomsday, sir!—­if you were—­I do hear you, sir, and you shall hear me—­if you were a younger man, I say, I would hold you answerable to me for your scandalous and disgraceful insinuations.’

Dr. Shrapnel was adroitly fenced and over-shouted.  He shrugged, stuttered, swayed, wagged a bulrush-head, flapped his elbows, puffed like a swimmer in the breakers, tried many times to expostulate, and finding the effort useless, for his adversary was copious and commanding, relapsed, eyeing him as an object far removed.

Cecil rounded one of his perplexingly empty sentences and turned on his heel.

‘War, then!’ he said.

‘As you like,’ retorted the doctor.

‘Oh!  Very good.  Good evening.’  Cecil slightly lifted his hat, with the short projection of the head of the stately peacock in its walk, and passed out of the garden.  Lord Palmet, deeply disappointed and mystified, went after him, leaving Dr. Shrapnel to shorten his garden walk with enormous long strides.