‘How was it Captain Dartrey happened to be present, Skepsey?’

’She is very firm.  You cannot move her.—­Captain Dartrey was on his way to the station, to meet a gentleman from London, Miss Nesta.  He carried a stick—­a remarkable stick—­he had shown to me in the morning, and he has given it me now.  He says, he has done his last with it.  He seems to have some of Matilda Pridden’s ideas about fighting, when it’s over.  He was glad to be rid of the stick, he said.’

‘But who attacked you?  What were the people?’

’Captain Dartrey says, England may hold up her head while she breeds young women like Matilda Pridden:  right or wrong, he says:  it is the substance.’

Hereupon Manton, sick of Miss Pridden, shook the little man with a snappish word, to bring him to attention.  She got him together sufficiently for him to give a lame version of the story; flat until he came to his heroine’s behaviour, when he brightened a moment, and he sank back absorbed in her principles and theories of life.  It was understood by Nesta, that the processionists, going at a smart pace, found their way blocked and were assaulted in one of the sidestreets; and that Skepsey rushed to the defence of Matilda Pridden; and that, while they were engaged, Captain Dartrey was passing at the end of the street, and recognized one he knew in the thick of it and getting the worst of it, owing to numbers.  ‘I will show you the stick he did it with, Miss Nests’; said Skepsey, regardless of narrative; and darted out of the room to bring in the Demerara supple-jack; holding which, he became inspired to relate something of Captain Dartrey’s deeds.

They gave no pleasure to his young lady, as he sadly perceived:—­thus it is with the fair sex ever, so fond of heroes!  She shut her eyes from the sight of the Demerara supple-jack descending right and left upon the skulls of a couple of bully lads.  ’That will do—­you were rescued.  And now go to bed, Skepsey; and be up at seven to breakfast with me,’ Nesta said, for his battle-damaged face would be more endurable to behold after an interval, she hoped; and she might in the morning dissociate its evil look from the deeds of Captain Dartrey.

The thought of her hero taking active part in a streetfray, was repulsive to her; it swamped his brilliancy.  And this distressed her, by withdrawing the support which the thought of him had been to her since mid-day.  She lay for sleepless hours, while nursing a deeper pain, under oppression of repugnance to battle-dealing, bloodshedding men.  It was long before she grew mindful of the absurdity of the moan recurring whenever reflection wearied.  Translated into speech, it would have run: 

’In a street of the town! with a stick!’—­The vulgar picture pursued her to humiliation; it robbed her or dimmed her possession of the one bright thing she had remaining to her.  So she deemed it during the heavy sighs of night; partly conscious, that in some strange way it was as much as tossing her to the man who never could have condescended to the pugnacious using of a stick in a street.  He, on the contrary, was a cover to the shamefaced.