His quick eye saw the two ladies, and he raised his broad-brimmed hat like a Stuart cavalier, and smiled.
"Waiting for your champion, eh ?" he asked with cynical friendliness.
"Well, work hard, because that will soften his fall." He leaned over, as it were confidentially, to them, while his friends craned their necks to hear what he said: "If I were you I'd prepare him.

He's beaten as sure as the sun shines." Junia was tempted to say what was in her mind, but her sister Sibyl, who resented Barouche's patronage, said: "There's an old adage about the slip 'twixt the cup and the lip, Monsieur Barouche.

He's young, and he's got a better policy than yours." "And he's unmarried, eh!" Barouche remarked.

"He's unmarried, and I suppose that matters!" There was an undercurrent of meaning in his voice which did not escape Junia.
"And Monsieur Barouche is also unmarried," she remarked.

"So you're even there." "Not quite even.