’It ‘s only tattle that says the duel has begun.’

’May is the month of everlasting beauty!  There ’s a widower marquis now who claims the right to cast the glove to any who dispute it.’

‘Mrs. May is too good-looking to escape from scandal.’

‘Amy May has the good looks of the Immortals.’

‘She can’t be thirty.’

‘In the calendar of women she counts thirty-four.’

‘Malignity!  Her husband’s a lucky man.’

‘The shots have proved it.’

Lord Ormont nodded his head over the hopeless task of defending a woman from a woman, and their sharp interchange ceased.  But the sight of his complacency in defeat told Aminta that he did not respect his fair client:  it drew a sketch of the position he allotted his wife before the world side by side with this Mrs. Amy May, though a Lady de Culme was persuaded to draw distinctions.

He had, however, quite complacently taken the dose intended for him by Mrs. Lawrence, who believed that the system of gently forcing him was the good one.

The ladies drove away in the afternoon.  The earl turned his back on manuscript.  He sent for a couple of walking sticks, and commanded Weyburn to go through his parades.  He was no tyro, merely out of practice, and unacquainted with the later, simpler form of the great master of the French school, by which, at serious issues, the guarding of the line can be more quickly done:  as, for instance, the ‘parade de septime’ supplanting the slower ‘parade de prime;’ the ‘parade de quarte’ having advantage over the ‘parade de quince;’ the ‘parade de tierce’ being readier and stronger than the ‘parade de sixte;’ the same said for the ‘parade de seconde’ instead of the weak ‘parade d’octave.’

These were then new points of instruction.  Weyburn demonstrated them as neatly as he could do with his weapon.

‘Yes, the French think,’ Lord Ormont said, grasping the stick to get conviction of thumb-strength and finger-strength from the parades advocated; ’their steel would thread the ribs of our louts before:  they could raise a cry of parry; so here they ’re pleased to sneer at fencing, as if it served no purpose but the duel.  Fencing, for one thing, means, that with a good stick in his hand, a clever fencer can double up a giant or two, grant him choice of ground.  Some of our men box; but the sword’s the weapon for an officer, and precious few of ’em are fit for more than to kick the scabbard.  Slashing comes easier to them:  a plaguey cut, if it does cut—­say, one in six.  Navy too.  Their cutlass-drill is like a woman’s fling of the arm to fetch a slap from behind her shoulder.  Pinking beats chopping.  These English ’ll have their lesson.  It ’s like what you call good writing:  the simple way does the business, and that’s the most difficult to learn, because you must give your head to it, as those French fellows do.  ‘Trop de finesse’ is rather their fault.  Anything’s better than loutishness.  Well! the lesson ‘ll come.’