“You may take care!” Martin panted, and delivered a rather wild thrust in prime. It was parried by the St. George Guard; and even as he became conscious of the enormity of what he had done, he found himself very hard-pressed indeed. He would have dropped his point at a word, but the word was not spoken. Gervase was no longer smiling, and his eyes had narrowed, their lazy good-humour quite vanished. Martin was forced to fight. A careless, almost mechanical thrust in carte over the arm was parried by a sharp beat of the Earl’s forte, traversing the line of his blade, and bearing his wrist irresistibly upwards. The Earl’s left foot came forward; his hand seized the shell of Martin’s sword, and forced it out to the right; he gripped it fast, and presented the button of his foil to Martin’s face.

“The Disarm!” he said, holding Martin’s eyes with his own.

Martin relinquished his foil. His chest was heaving; he seemed as though he would have said something, but before he could recover his breath enough to do so an interruption occurred. Theo, who, for the past few minutes, had been standing, with Miss Morville, rooted on the threshold, strode forward, ejaculating thunderously: “Martin! Are you mad?”

Martin started, and looked round, a sulky, defensive expression on his flushed countenance. His brother laid down the foils. Miss Morville’s matter-of-fact voice broke into an uncomfortable silence. “How very careless of you, not to have observed that the button is off your point!” she said severely. “There might have been an accident, if your brother had not been sharper-eyed than you.”

“Oh, no, there might not!” Martin retorted. “I couldn’t touch him! There was no danger!”

He caught up his coat as he spoke, and, without looking at Gervase, went hastily out of the gallery.

“I expect,” said Miss Morville, with unruffled placidity, — “that swords are much like guns. My Papa was used to say, when they were boys, that he would not trust my brothers with guns unless he were there to keep an eye on them, for let a boy become only a little excited and he would forget the most commonplace precautions. I came to tell you, Lord St. Erth, that your stepmother wishes you will join her in the Amber Drawing-room. General Hawkhurst has come to pay his respects to you.”

“Thank you! I will come directly,” he replied.

“Drusilla, you will not mention to anyone — what you saw a moment ago!” Theo said.

She paused in the doorway, looking back over her shoulder. “Oh, no! Why should I, indeed? I am sure Martin would very much dislike it if anyone were to roast him for being so heedless.”

With this prosaic reply, she left the Armoury, closing the door behind her.

“Gervase, what happened?” Theo said. “How came Martin to be fencing with a naked point?”

“Oh, he tried to cross my blade, but since I am rather too old a hand to be caught by such a trick as that, it was his sword, not mine, which was lost,” Gervase said lightly. “The button was loosened, I daresay, by the fall.”

“Are you trying to tell me that he did not perceive it?”

Gervase smiled. “Why, no! But the thing was, you see, that he was so angry with me for being the better swordsman that his rage quite overthrew his judgment, and he tried to pink me. I was never in any danger, you know: he has not been so badly taught, but he lacks precision and pace.”

“So I saw! You had him clearly at your mercy, but that cannot excuse his conduct!”

“As to that, perhaps I was a little at fault,” Gervase confessed. “But, really, you know, Theo, he is such an unschooled colt that I thought he deserved a set-down! I own, I said what I knew must enrage him. No harm done: he is now very much ashamed of himself, and that must be counted as a gain.”

“I hope you may be found to be right. But — ” He broke off, his brows contracting.

“Well?”

“It happened as you have described, of course, but — he raised his eyes to his cousin’s face, and said bluntly: “Gervase, be a little more careful, I beg of you! You might not have noticed it, but I saw, in his face, such an expression of fury — I had almost said, of hatred — !”

“Yes, I did notice it,” Gervase said quietly. “He would have been happy to have murdered me, would he not?”

“No, no, don’t think it! He is, as you have said, an unschooled colt, and he has been used to being so much petted and praised — But he would not murder you!”

“It was certainly his intention, my dear Theo!”

“Not his intention!” Theo said swiftly. “His impulse, at that instant!”

“The distinction is too nice for his victim to appreciate. Come, Theo! Be plain with me, I beg of you! You tried to put me on my guard, I fancy, that first evening, when you came to my bedchamber, and drank a glass of brandy with me there. Was it against Martin that you were warning me?” He waited for a moment. “I am answered, I suppose!”

“I don’t know. I dare not say so! Only be a little wary, Gervase! If some accident were to befall you — why, I dare swear he himself would admit to being glad of it! But that he would contrive to bring about such an accident I have never believed, until I saw his face just now! The suspicion did then flash into my mind — but it must be nonsensical!”

“Theo, I do think you should have rushed in, and thrown yourself between us!” Gervase complained.

“Yes, and so I would have done had I wished to startle you into dropping your guard!” Theo retorted, laughing. “What I might have felt myself impelled to do had you appeared to me to be hard-pressed I know not! Something heroic, no doubt! But stop bamming, Gervase! What have you been doing to make Martin ready to murder you?”

“Why, I have been flaunting my title and my dandified airs in the eyes of his inamorata, and he fears she may be dazzled!”

“Oh! I collect that you have somehow contrived to meet Miss Bolderwood?”

“Yes, and I wish you will tell me why no one has ever told me of her existence! She is the sweetest sight my eyes have alighted upon since I came into Lincolnshire!”

Theo smiled, but perfunctorily, and turned a little aside, to lay the foils in their case. “She is very beautiful,” he agreed, in a colourless tone.

“An heiress too, if I have understood her father! Shall I try my fortune?”

“By all means.”

Gervase glanced quickly at his averted profile. “Theo! You too?”

Theo uttered a short laugh. “Don’t disturb yourself! I might as well aspire to the hand of a Royal Princess!” He shut the sword-case, and turned. “Come! If General Hawkhurst has honoured you with a visit, you had better make yourself a little more presentable.”

“Very true: I will do so at once!” Gervase said, rather glad to be relieved of the necessity of answering his cousin’s embittered words. From the little he had seen of both, he could not but feel that the staid Drusilla would make a more suitable bride for Theo than the livelier and by far more frivolous Marianne; he must, moreover, have been obliged to agree that there could be little hope that Sir Thomas would bestow his only child on a man in Theo’s circumstances.

He did not again see Martin until they met at the dinner-table. There was then a little constraint in Martin’s manner, but since he was so much a creature of moods this caused his mother no concern. Her mind was, in fact, preoccupied with the startling request made to her by her stepson, that she should send out cards of invitation for a ball at Stanyon. Since her disposition generally led her to dislike any scheme not of her own making, her first reaction was to announce with an air of majestic finality that it was not to be thought of; but when the Earl said apologetically that he was afraid some thought would have to be spent on the project, unless a party quite unworthy of the traditions of Stanyon were to be the result, she began to perceive that his mind was made up. An uneasy suspicion, which had every now and then flitted through her head since the episode of the Indian epergne, again made itself felt: her stepson, for all his gentle voice and sweet smile, was not easily to be intimidated. From her first flat veto, she passed to the enumeration of all the difficulties in the way of holding a ball at Stanyon at that season of the year. She was still expatiating on the subject when she took her place at the foot of the dinner-table. “Had it been Christmas, it might have been proper for us to have done something of that nature,” she said.

“Hardly, ma’am!” said Gervase, in a deprecating tone. “You had not then, I am persuaded, put off your blacks.”

This was unanswerable; and while she was thinking of some further objection, Martin, who had not been present when the scheme was first mooted, demanded to be told what was going forward. When it was made known to him, he could not dislike the project. His eyes brightened; he turned them towards Gervase, exclaiming: “I call that a famous notion! We have not had such an affair at Stanyon since I don’t know when! When is it to be?”

“I have been explaining to your brother,” said the Dowager, “that a ball held in the country at this season cannot be thought to be eligible.”

“Oh, fudge, Mama! No one removes to town until April — no one we need care for, at least! I daresay we could muster as many as fifty couples — well, twenty-five, at all events! and that don’t include all the old frights who will come only to play whist!”

“I fear that my state of health would be quite unequal to entertaining so many persons,” said the Dowager, making a determined bid for mastery.

As she had never been known to suffer even the most trifling indisposition, this announcement not unnaturally staggered her son. Before he could expostulate, however, Gervase said solicitously: “I would not for the world prejudice your health, ma’am! To be sure, to expect you to receive and to contrive for so many people would be an infamous thing for me to do! But I have been considering, you know, whether, if I sent my own chaise to convey her, my Aunt Dorothea might not be prevailed upon to drive over from Studham, to relieve you of those duties which might prove too much for your strength. I daresay, if we invited her to stay at Stanyon for a week or so, she would not altogether object to it.”