"To use your hands upon a man!" He shuddered in sheer disgust.

"To one of my temperament it would be impossible, and men of my temperament are plentiful, I think." "But if you were thrashed yourself ?" Tremayne asked him, and the light in his grey eyes almost hinted at a dark desire to be himself the executioner.
Samoval's dark, handsome eyes considered the captain steadily.

"To be thrashed myself ?" he questioned.

"My dear Captain, the idea of having hands laid upon me, soiling me, brutalising me, is so nauseating, so repugnant, that I assure you I should not hesitate to shoot the man who did it just as I should shoot any other wild beast that attacked me.
Indeed the two instances are exactly parallel, and my country's courts would uphold in such a case the justice of my conduct." "Then you may thank God," said O'Moy, "that you are not under British jurisdiction." "I do," snapped Samoval, to make an instant recovery: "at least so far as the matter is concerned." And he elaborated: "I assure you, sirs, it will be an evil day for the nobility of any country when its Government enacts against the satisfaction that one gentleman has the right to demand from another who offends him." "Isn't the conversation rather too bloodthirsty for a luncheon-table ?" wondered Lady O'Moy.

And tactlessly she added, thinking with flattery to mollify Samoval and cool his obvious heat: "You are yourself such a famous swordsman, Count." And then Tremayne's dislike of the man betrayed him into his deplorable phrase.
"At the present time Portugal is in urgent need of her famous swordsmen to go against the French and not to increase the disorders at home." A silence complete and ominous followed the rash words, and Samoval, white to the lips, pondered the imperturbable captain with a baleful eye.
"I think," he said at last, speaking slowly and softly, and picking his words with care, "I think that is innuendo.