The one stick not pointed was wrenched from the grasp of Sir Meeson Corby; and by a woman, the young woman who had accosted my lord; not a common young woman either, as she appeared when beseeching him.  Her stature rose to battle heights:  she made play with Sir Meeson Corby’s ebony stick, using it in one hand as a dwarf quarterstaff to flail the sconces, then to dash the point at faces; and she being a woman, a girl, perhaps a lady, her cool warrior method of cleaving way, without so much as tightening her lips, was found notable; and to this degree (vouched for by Rose Mackrell, who heard it), that a fellow, rubbing his head, cried:  ‘Damn it all, she’s clever, though!’ She took her station beside Lord Fleetwood.

He had been as cool as she, or almost.  Now he was maddened; she defended him, she warded and thrust for him, only for him, to save him a touch; unasked, undesired, detested for the box on his ears of to-morrow’s public mockery, as she would be, overwhelming him with ridicule.  Have you seen the kick and tug at the straps of the mettled pony in stables that betrays the mishandling of him by his groom?  Something so did Fleetwood plunge and dart to be free of her, and his desperate soul cried out on her sticking to him like a plaster!

Welcome were the constables.  His guineas winked at their chief, as fair women convey their meanings, with no motion of eyelids; and the officers of the law knew the voice habituated to command, and answered two words of his:  ‘Right, my lord,’ smelling my lord in the unerring manner of those days.  My lord’s party were escorted to the gates, not a little jeered; though they by no means had the worst of the tussle.  But the puffing indignation of Sir Meesan Corby over his battered hat and torn frill and buttons plucked from his coat, and his threat of the magistrates, excited the crowd to derisive yells.

My lord spoke something to his man, handing his purse.

The ladies were spared the hearing of bad language.  They, according to the joint testimony of M. de St. Ombre and Mr. Rose Mackrell, comported themselves throughout as became the daughters of a warrior race.  Both gentlemen were emphatic to praise the unknown Britomart who had done such gallant service with Sir Meeson’s ebony wand.  He was beginning to fuss vociferously about the loss of the stick—­a family stick, goldheaded, the family crest on it, priceless to the family—­when Mrs. Kirby-Levellier handed it to him inside the coach.

‘But where is she?’ M. de St. Ombre said, and took the hint of Livia’s touch on his arm in the dark.

At the silence following the question, Mr. Rose Mackrell murmured, ‘Ah!’

He and the French gentleman understood that there might have been a manifestation of the notorious Whitechapel Countess.