‘And in a dining-room too,’ added Sullivan Smith.  ’I was one day at a dinner-party, apparently of undertakers hired to mourn over the joints and the birds in the dishes, when the ceiling came down, and we all sprang up merry as crickets.  It led to a pretty encounter and a real prize-shot.’

‘Does that signify a duel?’ asked Lady Pennon.

’’Twould be the vulgar title, to bring it into discredit with the populace, my lady.’

’Rank me one of the populace then!  I hate duelling and rejoice that it is discountenanced.’

‘The citizens, and not the populace, I think Mr. Sullivan Smith means,’ Diana said.  ’The citizen is generally right in morals.  My father also was against the practice, when it raged at its “prettiest.”  I have heard him relate a story of a poor friend of his, who had to march out for a trifle, and said, as he accepted the invitation, “It’s all nonsense!” and walking to the measured length, “It’s all nonsense, you know!” and when lying on the ground, at his last gasp, “I told you it was all nonsense!"’

Sullivan Smith leaned over to Whitmonby and Dacier amid the ejaculations, and whispered:  ’A lady’s way of telling the story!—­and excuseable to her:—­she had to Jonah the adjective.  What the poor fellow said was—­’ He murmured the sixty-pounder adjective, as in the belly of the whale, to rightly emphasize his noun.

Whitmonby nodded to the superior relish imparted by the vigour of masculine veracity in narration.  ’A story for its native sauce piquante,’ he said.

‘Nothing without it!’

They had each a dissolving grain of contempt for women compelled by their delicacy to spoil that kind of story which demands the piquant accompaniment to flavour it racily and make it passable.  For to see insipid mildness complacently swallowed as an excellent thing, knowing the rich smack of savour proper to the story, is your anecdotal gentleman’s annoyance.  But if the anecdote had supported him, Sullivan Smith would have let the expletive rest.

Major Carew Mahoney capped Mrs. Warwick’s tale of the unfortunate duellist with another, that confessed the practice absurd, though he approved of it; and he cited Lord Larrian’s opinion:  ’It keeps men braced to civil conduct.’

’I would not differ with the dear old lord; but no! the pistol is the sceptre of the bully,’ said Diana.

Mr. Hepburn, with the widest of eyes on her in perpetuity, warmly agreed; and the man was notorious among men for his contrary action.

’Most righteously our Princess Egeria distinguishes her reign by prohibiting it,’ said Lady Singleby.

‘And how,’ Sullivan Smith sighed heavily, ’how, I’d ask, are ladies to be protected from the bully?’

He was beset:  ’So it was all for us? all in consideration for our benefit?’

He mournfully exclaimed:  ‘Why, surely!’

’That is the funeral apology of the Rod, at the close of every barbarous chapter,’ said Diana.