"I'd have a train o' beaux and
macaronis at my heels, I warrant you! The foppier, the more it would
please me. Think, cousin--ranks of them all a-simper, ogling me through
a hundred quizzing-glasses! Heigho! There's doubtless some deviltry in
me, as Sir Lupus says."
She yawned again, looked up at the stars, then fell to twisting her fan
with idle fingers.
"I suppose," she said, more to herself than to me, "that Sir John is now
close to the table's edge, and Colonel Claus is under it.... Hark to
their song, all off the key! But who cares?... so that they quarrel
not.... Like those twin brawlers of Glencoe, ... brooding on feuds nigh
a hundred years old.... I have no patience with a brooder, one who
treasures wrongs, ... like Walter Butler." She looked up at me.
"I warned you," she said.
"It is not easy to avoid insulting him," I replied.
"I warned you of that, too. Now you've a quarrel, and a reckoning in
prospect."
"The reckoning is far off," I retorted, ill-humoredly.
"Far off--yes. Further away than you know. You will never cross swords
with Walter Butler."
"And why not?"
"He means to use the Iroquois."
I was silent.
"For the honor of your women, you cannot fight such a man," she added,
quietly.
"I wish I had the right to protect your honor," I said, so suddenly and
so bitterly that I surprised myself.
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