O\'Hare drew himself up. He had grown all at once exceedingly still.

Mr. Stafford, gradually recovering from his paroxysms, had begun to bestow some intelligent interest upon the scene. There was a mist of doubt in his eyes as he gazed from the victimised, but very lively, lady to her crestfallen "violent abductor," and thence to the gloomy countenance of the new-comer on the threshold. There seemed to be, it struck him, a prodigious deliberation in Mistress Kitty\'s cry and start of surprise.

"What is my pretty Bellairs up to now? Well, poor Irish Denis, with all his wits, is no match for her anyhow, and, faith, she knows it," thought he. Aloud he said, with great placidity: "Fie, fie, this is shocking to hear!" and sat, the good-humoured Chorus to the Comedy, on the edge of the table, waiting for the development of the next scene. Sir Jasper, wiping a beaded brow and still staring, as if by the sheer fixing of his bloodshot eye he could turn these disappointing puppets into the proper objects of his vengeance, was quite unable to follow any current but the muddy whirl of his own thoughts.

Lord Verney alone it was, therefore, who rose at all to Mistress Kitty\'s situation.

"Are you the scoundrel, then," said he, marching upon O\'Hara, "who dared to lay hands upon an unprotected lady in the very streets of Bath?"

"Monstrous!" remarked Captain Spicer behind him. Then jogging his patron\'s elbow, "\'Twas well spoke, Verney, man. At him again, there\'s blood in this."

Mr. O\'Hara looked steadily at Lord Verney, glancing contemptuously at Captain Spicer, and then gazed with long, full searching at the beguiling widow.

She thought to scent danger to herself in the air; and, womanlike, she seized unscrupulously upon the sharpest weapon in her armoury.

"Perhaps," she said, with an angry, scornful laugh, "Mr. O\'Hara will now deny that he and his servants attacked my chairmen in the dark, threw me, screaming with terror, into his carriage, and that his intention was avowedly to wed me by force in London to-morrow."

All eyes were fixed on the Irishman, and silence waited upon his reply. He had grown so pale that his red head seemed to flame by contrast. He made a low bow.

"No, Kitty," said he, in a very gentle voice, "I deny nothing." Then sweeping the company with a haughty glance. "This lady," said he, "has spoken truth; as for me, I am ready to meet the consequences of my conduct."

His eye finally rested once more on Lord Verney. The latter grew white and then scarlet; while Spicer whispered and again jogged.

"Of course," blustered the youth, and wished that he had the curious digestion of his contemporaries, that his stomach did not so squeamishly rebel at the prospect of a dose of steel, "of course, sir, you must be aware——"

"It shall be swords," interrupted the irrepressible Spicer; "and gad, sir, what my noble friend will have left of your body I will myself make mince of this night! Aye, sir," said the Captain, beginning to squint as was his wont under excitement, and slapping his bony chest; "I will fight you myself, sir."

"Fight you!" exclaimed O\'Hara, suddenly stung into magnificent contempt. "Fight you, sir?" he ran a withering eye over the grasshopper anatomy of the toady as he spoke, "you, sir, you, the writer of that dirty note this morning, bidding me apologise—apologise!" cried Denis, with his most luscious brogue, "to the man, Sir Jasper there, for having insulted you on the subject of your miserable mealy head—fight you, sir? Sure, rather than fight you," said Mr. O\'Hara, searching for the most emphatic asseveration conceivable, "I\'d never fight again for the rest of my life! But I\'ll tell you what I\'ll do for you: next time you thrust that ugly face of yours within the reach of me arm Oi\'ll pull your nose till it\'s as long as your tongue, and as slender as your courage, damme!"

"Oh, gad! what a low scoundrel," murmured Captain Spicer, withdrawing quickly several paces, and with an intensified cast in his eye; "\'tis positive unfit for a gentleman to speak to him!"

"Now, my lord?" said O\'Hara, resuming his easy dignity.

But that her comedy should drift into tragedy was none of Mistress Kitty\'s intentions. Briskly stepping between the laboriously pugnacious Verney and the poor Irishman, whose eye (for all his present composure) shone with the lust of the fray, she thus addressed them collectively and in turn:

"Shame, shame, gentlemen, I protest! Is it not enough that a poor woman\'s heart should be set a-fluttering by over-much love, must it now go pit-a-pat again for over-much hate? My Lord Verney, think of your mother. Think of her, of whose declining years you are the sole prop and joy; recall to mind those principles of high morality, of noble Christian duty, which that paragon of women so sedulously inculcated in you!" Her voice quivered on the faintest note of mockery. "Oh, what would that worthy lady\'s feelings be, were you to be brought home to her—a corse! What, ah what indeed! would your feelings be if, by some accident," here she shot involuntarily what was almost the suspicion of a wink in the direction of O\'Hara, "you had to answer for the life of a fellow-creature before to-morrow\'s dawn? Why, you could never open your Bible again without feeling in your bosom the throbbing heart of a Cain!" She stopped to draw breath.

Mr. Stafford, one delighted grin, slid the whole length of the table on which he sat with dangling legs, to get a fuller view of the saucy face: "Incomparable Bellairs," he murmured to himself with keen appreciation, And: "So, ho, my noble friend," thought he, as he shot a glance at the solemn Verney, "now do I know what has closed to you for ever the gates of Paradise."

"And you, Mr. O\'Hara," resumed the lady, turning her eye, full of indefinable and entrancing subtleties upon the honest gentleman, "would you have me forgive you this night\'s work? Do not, then, do not force this impetuous young man to an unnecessary quarrel. Allow him to withdraw his challenge. Do that in atonement, sir," said she, with much severity of accent; but her eye said sweetly enough, "Do that for me" and gave further promise of unutterable reward.

"Madam," said O\'Hara, glancing away as if the sight of her beauty were now more pain than pleasure to him, "\'tis for my Lord Verney to speak; I............