how men are taught to think they know our sex and may despise it!  I could preach them a lesson.  Those men might as well not believe in the steadfastness of the very stars because one or two are reported lost out of the firmament, and now and then we behold a whole shower of fragments descending.  The truth is, they have taken a stain from the life they lead, and are troubled puddles, incapable of clear reflection.  To listen to the tattle of a chatting little slut, and condemn the whole sex upon her testimony, is a nice idea of justice.  Many of the gentlemen present became notorious as woman-scorners, whether owing to Countess Fanny or other things.  Lord Levellier was, and Lord Fleetwood, the wicked man!  And certainly the hearing of naughty stories of us by the light of a grievous and vexatious instance of our misconduct must produce an impression.  Countess Fanny’s desperate passion for a man of the age of Kirby struck them as out of nature.  They talked of it as if they could have pardoned her a younger lover.

All that Lord Cressett said, on the announcement of the flight of his wife, was:  ‘Ah!  Fan! she never would run in my ribbons.’

He positively declined to persue.  Lord Levellier would not attempt to follow her up without him, as it would have cost money, and he wanted all that he could spare for his telescopes and experiments.  Who, then, was the gentleman who stopped the chariot, with his three mounted attendants, on the road to the sea, on the heath by the great Punch-Bowl?

That has been the question for now longer than half a century, in fact approaching seventy mortal years.  No one has ever been able to say for certain.

It occurred at six o’clock on the summer morning.  Countess Fanny must have known him,—­and not once did she open her mouth to breathe his name.  Yet she had no objection to talk of the adventure and how Simon Fettle, Captain Kirby’s old ship’s steward in South America, seeing horsemen stationed on the ascent of the high road bordering the Bowl, which is miles round and deep, made the postillion cease jogging, and sang out to his master for orders, and Kirby sang back to him to look to his priming, and then the postillion was bidden proceed, and he did not like it, but he had to deal with pistols behind, where men feel weak, and he went bobbing on the saddle in dejection, as if upon his very heart he jogged; and soon the fray commenced.  There was very little parleying between determined men.

Simon Fettle was a plain kindly creature without a thought of malice, who kept his master’s accounts.  He fired the first shot at the foremost man, as he related in after days, ‘to reduce the odds.’  Kirby said to Countess Fanny, just to comfort her, never so much as imagining she would be afraid, ‘The worst will be a bloody shirt for Simon to mangle,’ for they had been arranging to live cheaply in a cottage on the Continent, and Simon Fettle to do the washing.  She could not help laughing outright.  But when the Old Buccaneer was down striding in the battle, she took a pistol and descended likewise; and she used it, too, and loaded again.