Both gentlemen were emphatic to praise the unknown Britomart who had done such gallant service with Sir Meeson's ebony wand.

He was beginning to fuss vociferously about the loss of the stick--a family stick, goldheaded, the family crest on it, priceless to the family--when Mrs.
Kirby-Levellier handed it to him inside the coach.
'But where is she ?' M.de St.Ombre said, and took the hint of Livia's touch on his arm in the dark.
At the silence following the question, Mr.Rose Mackrell murmured, 'Ah!' He and the French gentleman understood that there might have been a manifestation of the notorious Whitechapel Countess.
They were two; and a slower-witted third was travelling to his ideas on the subject.

Three men, witnesses of a remarkable incident in connection with a boiling topic of current scandal,--glaringly illustrative of it, moreover,--were unlikely to keep close tongues, even if they had been sworn to secresy.

Fleetwood knew it, and he scorned to solicit them; an exaction of their idle vows would be merely the humiliation of himself.
So he tossed his dignity to recklessness, as the ultraconvivial give the last wink of reason to the wine-cup.

Persecuted as he was, nothing remained for him but the nether-sublime of a statuesque desperation.
That was his feeling; and his way of cloaking it under light sallies at Sir Meeson and easy chat with Henrietta made it visible to her, from its being the contrary of what the world might expect a proud young nobleman to exhibit.