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Updated: May 8, 2025
He attended meetings at the "Bull's Head," in Bishopsgate, where he met Disney and Danvers, Payton and Lock; but though they talked and argued at prodigious length, they did naught besides.
Apart from the wager, it was clear that if Lemoine had not met his match, the Captain had; and in the future would have to mend his manners in respect to one person present. Doubtless many of those in the room, on whose toes Payton had often trodden, had the same idea, and felt secret joy, pleased that the bully of the regiment was like to meet with a reverse and a master.
He made his meaning so clear, and pointed it so audaciously before them all, that Payton, after scowling at him for some seconds with his hand on a glass as if he meant to throw it, dropped his eyes and his hand and fell into a gloomy study. He could not but own the weight of the other's argument.
"The same and no other! He is away to-day, but he'll be returning tomorrow, and he'll be delighted to see you! And by good luck, there are foils in the house, and he'll pass the time pleasantly with you! It's he's the hospitable creature!" Payton was far from pleased. He was anything but anxious to see the man whose skill had turned the joke against him; and his face betokened his feelings.
If Asgill was a pretender to the heiress's hand and Payton did not doubt this the last thought in his mind would be to divest her of her property. Asgill read his thoughts, and presently, "I hope the wound is not serious?" he said. "He is not wounded," the Major answered curtly. A few minutes before he would have flown out at the other; now he took the thrust quietly. He was thinking.
His scheme for ridding himself of Payton had failed; it remained to face the situation. He did not distrust Flavia; no Englishman, he was sure, would find favour with her. But he distrusted Payton, his insolence, his violence, and the privileged position which his duellist's skill gave him. And then there was Colonel John.
Then, with a flicker and a girding of steel on steel, Asgill's sword flew from his hand, and at the same instant or so nearly at the same instant that the disarming and the thrust might have seemed to an untrained eye one motion Payton turned his wrist and his sword buried itself in Asgill's body. The unfortunate man recoiled with a gasping cry, staggered and sank sideways to the ground.
But Payton had met his man too often on the green to be taken by surprise. He parried the first thrust, the second he evaded by stepping adroitly aside. By the same movement he put the sun in Asgill's eyes. Again the latter rushed in, striving to get within his opponent's guard; and again Payton stepped aside, and allowed the random thrust to pass wasted under his arm.
"And a new hand," Payton added in the same tone. Even for his henchman the remark was almost too much. But the Colonel, strange to say perhaps he really was very simple seemed to find nothing offensive in it. On the contrary, he replied to it. "That was precisely," he said, "what I thought when this" he indicated his maimed hand "happened to me. And I did my best to procure one."
Payton, an Irish squire, who had brought his two daughters up from the country for a few weeks' gaiety. Well, we took a fancy to one another. I was always a queer sort of chap, hating convention and all the trammels of society, and I liked the old man at once. He was a big, jolly old boy, a thorough sportsman and Irish to the backbone.
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