‘To defend his character.’

‘He has none.’

‘His reputation.’

‘He has too much.’

‘These charges against him must be intolerable.’

‘Was he not a bit of a pupil of yours?’

‘We practised two or three times-nothing more.’

’Morsfield was a wasp at a feast.  Somebody had to crush him.  I ’ve seen the kind of man twice in my life and exactly the kind of man.  If their law puts down duelling, he rules the kingdom!’

’My lord, I should venture to say the kind of man can be a common annoyance because the breach of the law is countenanced.’

’Bad laws are best broken.  A society that can’t get a scouring now and then will be a dirty set.’

With a bend of the head, in apology for speaking of himself, Weyburn said:  ’I have acted on my view.  I declined a challenge from a sort of henchman of his.’

’Oh! a poacher’s lurcher?  You did right.  Fight such fellows with constables.  You have seen Lady Charlotte?’

‘I am on my way to her ladyship.’

’Do me this favour.  Fourteen doors up the street of her residence, my physician lives.  I have to consult him at once.  Dr. Rewkes.’

Weyburn bowed.  Lady Charlotte could not receive him later than half-past ten of the morning, he said.  ‘This morning she can,’ said my lord.  ’You will tell Dr. Rewkes that it is immediate.  I rather regret your going.  I shall be in a controversy with the Horse Guards about our cavalry saddles.  It would be regiments of raw backs the first fortnight of a campaign.’

The earl discoursed on saddles; and passed to high eulogy of our Hanoverian auxiliary troopers in the Peninsula; ‘good husbands,’ he named them quaintly, speaking of their management of their beasts.  Thence he diverged to Frederic’s cavalry, rarely matched for shrewdness and endurance; to the deeds of the Liechtenstein Hussars; to the great things Blucher did with his horsemen.

The subject was interesting; but Weyburn saw the clock at past the half after ten.  He gave a slight sign of restiveness, and was allowed to go when the earl had finished his pro and con upon Arab horses and Mameluke saddles.  Lord Ormont nicked his head, just as at their first interview:  he was known to have an objection to the English shaking of hands.  ‘Good-morning,’ he said; adding a remark or two, of which et cetera may stand for an explicit rendering.  It concerned the young man’s prosperity:  my lord’s conservative plain sense was in doubt of the prospering of a giddy pate, however good a worker.  His last look at the young man, who had not served him badly, held an anticipation of possibly some day seeing a tatterdemalion of shipwreck, a rueful exhibition of ideas put to the business of life.

Weyburn left the message with Dr. Rewkes in person.  It had not seemed to him that Lord Ormont was one requiring the immediate attendance of a physician.  By way of accounting to Lady Charlotte for the lateness of his call, he mentioned the summons he had delivered.