“That is charming. Two real swords. Did you buy them a bargain, to be cut up into scissors? Well, any improvement in your French cutlery is to be hailed with ecstacy.”
But while he spoke his eye was vigilant, and his foot firm on the floor, and ready for a spring, should Silvain offer sudden violence.
The Frenchman had no such base intent. He placed the box on a chair, pushed away the table, so as to leave the centre of the room free, and calmly offered Adair his choice of weapons.
For a moment it crossed Ernest’s mind to snatch both, but the next instant he smiled and took one of the swords.
“This looks the prettier handle,” he said, without rising, “but both are very nicely cleaned, and do credit to our crystal scouring powder, breveté. What next?”
“Next, defend yourself, Monsieur,” said Silvain, retiring, and taking up his position in a very determined manner. “The door is behind me,” he added, for the first time letting a taunt escape him.
“I am obliged by the counsel and the information,” said Adair, still keeping his seat. “But are you sufficiently insane, M. Silvain—and as you repudiate intoxication, observe the ready charity that offers you another excuse—are you sufficiently insane to suppose that I am going to fight a hairdresser about a lady’s-maid?”
“We will not talk, M. Adair. You have long since waived all the considerations of rank, even if I allowed them. You have insulted a young person whom I esteem, Monsieur, therefore, defend yourself.”
He looked so determined, as he spoke, that Ernest thought it prudent to rise, in order to repel any sudden attack, but he did not advance upon his antagonist.
“This is a gentleman’s reward when he condescends to fraternise with canaille,” he said, with calm impertinence.
“Fight, and do not talk,” replied the Frenchman, advancing upon him, with the most evident intention of doing his very worst.
Ernest instinctively fell upon guard—the blades crossed—and M. Silvain’s sword, like that of the Corsair, made fast atonement for its first delay. He attacked Adair with downright fury, and any one thrust which he delivered would, unparried, have worked important change in the subsequent destinies of several persons with whom the reader is acquainted. But Adair, retaining his cigarette between his teeth, coolly parried every lunge, without making a return.
“How long,” he said, as M. Silvain, baffled in a vigorous onslaught, retreated for a moment, and glared vengefully at his antagonist, “how long is this delightful assault of arms to proceed?”
“Until one falls, Monsieur,” cried M. Silvain, anew advancing to the combat. Ernest smiled.
But the most cold-blooded man is roused sooner or later by the persistent efforts of another to do him mortal harm, and, moreover, there is something in the rapid clash of steel that fires the soul of the swordsman. Another desperate effort of Silvain’s to get home, and Ernest had no longer the paper in his teeth, but had set them, and with a very evil eye was keeping deadly watch on that of his enemy. Adair was rapidly forgetting how inexcusably foolish he would be to derange all his schemes for the sake of punishing a petty shopkeeper, and was on the very point of leaving the defensive and lunging his best when the voice of Mary Henderson was heard hastily asking whether Mr. Adair was within.
The sound operated differently on the two men. Adair instantly recalled his better judgment to his aid, and, still watching his enraged antagonist, did not return his thrust. But the voice of his mistress roused the lover to heroism, and he felt that he would have given his own life to let her see her enemy stretched on the floor between them. Thirsting to finish the duel, he rushed at Adair, delivered three or four rapid and desperate lunges, and laid himself open to a thrust that, had Adair pleased, would have speedily ended M. Silvain’s life, love, and woes. But Ernest (as will have been perceived), a practised and skilful fencer, did not so please; but at the instant Mary’s hand was on the door, he suddenly performed one of the feats known in the art; and as the girl entered, she had the satisfaction of seeing her lover, with a wrenched wrist, glaring with anger and discomfiture at Ernest, the sword of Silvain having flown to a distance on the floor.
“And I had forbidden you,” said Mary, reproachfully, to Silvain.
“Forbidden him to give me a fencing lesson, Mademoiselle?” said Adair, as calmly as usual. “That was indeed cruel, for he is so good a master of the sword that I profit greatly by his teaching.”
The girl looked searchingly at her lover, conceiving from the expression of his face and from his being defenceless, that he might have received a hurt, the rather that Silvain was too mortified to speak on the instant.
“He has not stabbed you?” asked Mary, vehemently.
“What a word, Mademoiselle!” said Ernest. “We do not stab, except under very exceptional circumstances. M. Silvain is perfectly unhurt, and I hope will pardon my awkwardness in knocking his sword out of his hand.”
He picked up Silvain’s weapon, and replaced it, with his own, in the box, which he quietly locked.
Meantime Mary was administering, in an under tone, that mixture of reproach, consolation, and affection which woman has ever ready for him whom she loves, and Silvain, with his hand in hers, was almost comforted for his defeat by the unwonted kindness with which his usually rather undemonstrative mistress caressed him.
“But I ordered you not,” she added.
“I thought of you, and could not obey you,” said M. Silvain, tenderly and epigrammatically.
“And now, my dear Alphonse,” said Adair, cheerfully, “let me renew my offer of absinthe. After a fencing-lesson one requires refreshment. What say you, Mademoiselle? You must teach him to take care of himself.”
“And I will,” said Mary, firmly, and leading her lover from the room, whence he certainly did not depart very triumphantly.
“I could have spiked the idiot a dozen times,” said Ernest, “but what would have been the